

Copy 1 













rHE REVIVAL 



S OF HEALING 





Class 
Book 



"IS? "* 






CopyrightN°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE REVIVAL 



OF 



THE GIFTS OF HEALING 



BY A CHURCHWOMAN 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

PRESS OP JUDD & DP/TWPJI<ER, INC. 

I9IO 






WW 



Copyright, 1910, by Mrs. Annie E. Wood 



©CLA275365 



DEDICATED 

To those who are working and praying for the revival 

and restoration of the Healing Gifts which 

our Lord left to His Church. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 
Chapter I. The reign of law n 

II. God or mammon, life or death, sin or right- 
eousness, health or sickness? Which shall 
it be ? 22 

III. The action and power of the mind on the 

organs and functions of the body 31 

IV. Jesus Christ our only Healer, the Saviour of 

the whole man, body and soul 47 

V. Prayer 63 

VI. The hunger for bodily healing is God-implanted 88 
VII. Testimonials 99 



FOREWORD. 

The purpose of these pages is to help to stem the tend- 
ency to let the material overshadow the spiritual; "to 
emphasize the presence of the Divine in man, and to 
protest against the degradation of the spiritual life to a 
wooden obedience to external authority." The world is 
not worse than ever it was ; in many respects it is better. 
Life is a spiral; again and again we come around to 
signal epochs in the world's history, each growing more 
subtle, demanding keener insight and more emphatic 
warnings as the step is made to the next round. 

"If the watchman see the sword come, and blow not 
the trumpet, and the people be not warned ; if the sword 
come and take any person from among them, he is taken 
away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the 
watchman's hand. So thou, O son of man, I have set 
thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore 
thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them 
from me."— Ez. xxxiii : 6, 7. 

Every son of man, as a follower of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, is thereby a watchman. In our Lord's plan for 
the redemption of the body from sin's results, sickness 
and death, we are invited and commanded to come unto 
Him, in a definite and specific way, that we may have 
life more abundant in the body. 

The tendency today is to be satisfied with bodily patch- 
work, with temporary alleviation of pain, to fall again 



8 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. , 

into the same, or a hopeless, apathetic subsidence into 
supposedly incurable diseases. It is human to desire 
to obtain even temporary surcease of pain, but when any 
physical disturbance is severe enough to send for the 
doctor, the true Christian, if he believes in the gospel 
and does, his duty, will "call for the elders of the church ; 
and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in 
the name of the Lord : and the prayer of faith shall save 
the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up ; and if he have 
committed sins they shall be forgiven him." In this way 
only is sin, the source of the trouble, reached ; the patient 
is left thereafter in a healthier condition of mind and 
body to resist the "wiles of the devil. For we wrestle 
not against flesh and blood" (disease is not primarily of 
the flesh and blood), "but against principalities, against 
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, 
against spiritual wickedness in high places." 

The writer gives her heartfelt convictions, formed 
after many years of prayerful study and actual experi- 
ences of herself and of others whom God has helped 
through her; these are given simply with a hunger to 
share the whole loaf of God's teachings and commands. 
The effort will not have been in vain if a single reader 
is helped to drop forever "that idea which has crept into 
the current teaching of Christianity — that is, to teach that 
that which Christ and His apostles declared to be a bond- 
age of Satan; the consequence of sin; the oppression of 
the devil — to teach that that is a spiritual blessing, or 
in itself the means of spiritual blessing, must surely be a 
source of great weakness to ourselves and to the whole 
body of the church. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 9 

"This was not the teaching of the apostles, as we have 
seen. It was not the teaching of the church of the first 
few centuries, if we may trust the general testimony of 
the Fathers. For we find the view taken by them (it 
is more particularly enunciated by S. Athanasius) with 
regard to our Lord's works of healing is that they 
formed an essential part of the work of redemption. It 
is beautifully put by S. Irenseus, who, speaking of the 
revelation of Christ in His works, says that 'when He 
found His own work shattered by sin, He healed it in 
every way! " 

"Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 
God forbid." 

Washington, D. C, October 21, 1910. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE REIGN OF LAW. 

THE) RESULT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ON BODY AND SOUL. 

Great peace have they which love thy law; and nothing 
shall offend them. — Ps. 119: 165. 

We are in the age of the rapid discovery of new laws, 
physical, mental, and spiritual. "Thy will be done on 
earth as it is in heaven," uttered these many centuries, 
is beginning to bring forth great fruit. God's will is 
His law ; hence the laws of heaven are to work on earth 
as in heaven, as exemplified by our Lord when He walked 
amongst men. Man toils laboriously for years to discover 
one law that will benefit the world; this long-drawn- 
out process is greatly, if not entirely, due to the fact that 
man depends too much upon his own human mind. If 
"in the beginning" he sought the inspiration of God, and 
daily went directly and specifically to Him for more 
light, not only would much time and labor be saved, but 
man would realize more rapidly the great truth that God 
is "nearer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet;" 
that He is interested in the smallest affairs of his life, as 
well as in the revelation of laws to benefit all mankind. 

It is related of George Miiller, the philanthropist, of 
Bristol, England, that, as he watched a friend mending 
a quill pen, he asked : 



12 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

"Do you pray to God when you mend your pen?" 

The friend answered : 

"It would be well to do so, but I cannot say I do pray 
when mending- my pen." 

Mr. Miiller replied: 

"I always do, and so I mend my pen much better." 

When he was crossing the ocean the vessel ran into a 
dense fog. Mr. Miiller approached the captain, tapped 
him on the shoulder, and said: 

"I must be in Quebec Saturday afternoon." 

It was Wednesday. 

"Impossible," replied the captain. 

"Very well," said Mr. Miiller; "if your ship cannot 
take me, God will find other means to take me. I have 
never broken an engagement in fifty-seven years." 

"I would willingly help you, but how can I? I am 
helpless," returned the captain. 

"Let us go down and pray," said Mr. Miiller. 

The captain wondered from what lunatic asylum the 
man came, and he asked: 

"Do you know how dense the fog is?" 

"No," said Mr. Miiller. "My eye is not on the density 
of the fog, but on the living God, who controls every 
circumstance of my life." 

The prayer was a most simple one, something like 
this: 

"O Lord, if it is consistent with Thy will, please re- 
move this fog in five minutes. Thou knowest the en- 
gagement Thou didst make for me in Quebec, Saturday. 
I believe it is Thy will." 

When the captain was about to pray, Mr. Miiller said : 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 13 

"No. First, you do not believe He will; secondly, I 
believe He has, and there is no need for you to pray 
about it. Captain, I have known my Lord for fifty- 
seven years, and never a day have I failed to gain an 
audience with my King. Open the door, and you will 
find the fog gone." 

It was. The captain declared this incident had changed 
the whole aspect of life for him. Would some think it 
was not according to natural laws? No, but it was ac- 
cording to spiritual laws. The God with whom we have 
to do is omnipotent. Hold on to God's omnipotence. 
Ask believingly, and you, too, dear reader, may have a 
daily audience with your King, and the reply will come 
just as definitely as ever it did with Mr. Muller. 

There is a law that will "add length of days and long 
life." Isaiah declares the "work of righteousness shall 
be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and 
assurance forever." "Great peace" comes with the lov- 
ing of God's law, but man cannot love a law of which he 
knows nothing. 

It is passing strange that the world will uphold and 
applaud those who are giving their lives to discover laws 
that reach no deeper than man's physical betterment, but 
will raise a hue and cry and dire threatenings when 
some one, taking God at His word, and whose soul is 
panting for God, gives his life to discover the law of 
righteousness, which not only means length of days and 
long life for this world, but for the soul an eternity. 
S. John declares, "this is life eternal, that they might 
know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
thou hast sent." 



14 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

This knowledge is obtained only through the law of 
righteousness, and the pioneers of every upward step 
have given their lives that others may come into the full 
blessing. We read of men yielding up their lives by 
being bitten by mosquitoes, thinking to prove the source 
of some plague ; of hands and arms eaten by the X-ray, 
and finally the end; in fact, a multitude of such experi- 
ments; then, in later years, all these results being cast 
on the experimental dump-heap. These men are lauded 
as heroes, and their names handed down to feed the 
courage of succeeding generations. But let one who has 
a passion for God attempt to take S. Paul's advice, and 
"present his body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto 
God, which is his reasonable service ; and be transformed 
by the renewing of his mind, that he may prove what is 
that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God," and 
he is branded as unsane, if not insane, and dangerous to 
the health of the community. 

This materialistic view comes from looking upon man 
as a body with a soul which is to operate in some other 
world, instead of a soul which is striving to manifest 
through a body here. But the hour has struck, and the 
rankest materialist is being forced gradually to admit 
that, above physical and mental laws, there are spiritual 
laws which God longs to reveal to those whose "souls 
pant after Him, as the hart panteth after the water 
brooks." 

In 1905 there was founded, in London, by Mr. James 
Moore Hickson, the Society of Emmanuel, with the 
Right Reverend Bishop Mylne as vice-president. On its 
committees are active ministers of the Church of Eng- 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 15 

land, noted doctors, and men and women of the nobility, 
and of active philanthropic work. This Society has been 
formed to promote the following objects : 

(1) To develop the Divine gifts left to His church by 
the Master, especially the gift of healing by prayer and 
laying on of hands, with the object of using these Divine 
gifts, not only for the healing of the body, but as a means 
of drawing the souls of men nearer to God. 

(2) To form a strong wall of defence against the 
powers of evil, by mutual united intercession, and by 
common reception of the Holy Communion on the second 
Sunday in the month. 

(3) To safeguard the central doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion, all members should acknowledge the Divinity of 
our Lord, although the operations of the Society should 
be freely used for all in need of them. 

A monthly magazine is issued, The Healer, the objects 
of which are two- fold: 

1. To emphasize the truth that our Lord Jesus Christ 
came to heal and to save the whole nature of man — his 
body, mind and spirit. 

2. To show our responsibility as followers of our 
Lord, to receive and exercise the power which He gave 
to His church, for the spiritual and bodily salvation of 
man, and in deepest humility and childlike faith, to be- 
come healers of men. 

In an editorial, The Healer rejoices to tell its readers 
that, in the June number of the British Medical Journal, 
there are more than forty pages devoted to articles on 
"Faith Healing." These articles are written by well- 
known eminent medical men; they point to a revolution 



1 6 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

of thought in the medical scientific world, and are a very 
remarkable sign of the times. In the leading article on 
"Medicine and Miracles," the writer says: "For a con- 
siderable time there has been a growing reaction against 
the dogmatic materialism which held sway over the 
minds of scientific men thirty or forty years ago. To 
Huxley, Tyndall, or Herbert Spencer the expression of a 
belief in the possibility of supernatural agency would 
have branded a man as a fool or an impostor. Hell was, 
it may be remembered, dismissed with costs by a high 
judicial authority; to the man of science heaven and 
miracles, and life and death, were explained by that 
blessed word 'molecules.' Now science is less cock-sure 
about a great many things, and men are not so ready as 
they were ... to declare that what they do not 
know is not knowledge." 

Among the eminent men who contribute their views 
are Sir Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physics in 
the University of Cambridge; Sir Henry Morris, ex- 
President, and Mr. Henry Butlin, President of the Royal 
College of Surgeons; Dr. Osier, Regius Professor of 
Medicine in the University of Oxford. 

An article on "Mental Healing" traces the cures 
wrought by the power of mind over the body from an- 
cient days down to the present time. Amongst other 
present-day agencies, the Society of Emmanuel is men- 
tioned as working on these lines. To this last statement 
the editor objects, and says: 

"It is at this point that we find ourselves in disagree- 
ment not only with the writer of the article on 'Mental 
Healing,' but with the general conclusion to which most 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. IJ 

of the articles point. We know the therapeutic value of 
the mind and of suggestion upon a weak and ailing body, 
and the curative effect of inspiring a patient with hope 
in order to draw forth that inner power within which is 
so important an aid to recovery, but this is surely not the 
highest form of 'healing by faith.' 

"A greater cure for diseased humanity has been given : 
the cure or wholeness which comes from the touch of 
our Lord Himself, who is waiting to heal all who come 
to Him by faith, sometimes directly and sometimes 
through those to whom He has entrusted His gifts of 
healing. The Virtue' which went out of Him for the 
healing of the mutitude must be acknowledged before we 
can attempt to understand the mysteries of spiritual heal- 
ing." 

In another editorial the writer deplores the "vast 
amount of ignorance which exists as to what spiritual 
healing really means." He relates : "I was recently 
taken to task by a friend for being a 'Faith Healer.' 
Said his friend, 'I am sorry you have taken up with this 
faith-healing matter ; I don't believe we are to do without 
doctors, and simply pray and hope for healing!' Our 
readers know that we do not by any means dispense with 
the aid of medical men; but we do teach that, for the 
Christian believer, there should be less clinging to the 
material and a far closer contact with the spiritual; a 
cleansing of the soul from all that is sinful, that Christ 
may draw near with His healing power, and free the 
body also of the evil of pain and sickness, for infirmities, 
both of body and soul alike, are contrary to God's will 
concerning man." 



1 8 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

This Society makes no distinction between functional 
and organic, curable and incurable diseases. Our Lord 
is the Healer; as in the days of old, He still heals "all 
manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the 
people." 

A correspondent writes to a daily paper: "The king- 
dom of heaven really and literally is at hand, if we can 
only be brought to see it and understand it." In the 
same issue a noted divine, in a baccalaureate sermon, 
begs the youth, "Build your world with imagination . . . 
and you will know happiness. Give rein to your imagi- 
nation; thus will mere materialism be stamped out, and 
your creation will be beautiful." 

Another divine takes for his text "Grow in Grace," 
and he tells the boys that "grace stands for the super- 
natural, and it is weakness and cowardice to speak of 
that word supernatural as though it need some explaining 
away." Still another divine tells us, "A wreath of smiles 
and a bouquet of cheerful words to the living are worth 
more than all the blossoms in creation to the dead. Abol- 
ish Sunday funerals, carriages, crepe, and desolation. 
Fill your hearts and homes with sunshine." 

We have here a spiritual symposium which spells noth- 
ing less than the millennium, the second coming of our 
Lord, when holiness will be triumphant throughout the 
world. What a waste of splendid oratory and advice 
if all these injunctions are to be smiled at and consid- 
ered impracticable ! Certainly they mean the fulfillment 
of our Lord's promise: "A new heaven and a new 
earth, . . . and there shall be no more death, neither 
sorrow nor crying: neither shall there be any more 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 19 

pain. . . . He that hath an ear, let him hear what 
the Spirit saith unto the churches." 

Since man is responsible for these things, man is re- 
sponsible for their destruction. Disease and death are 
to be wiped out here and now, on this earth, by man, 
with God's help. Reform in every department calls for 
prevention, and the only true prevention is righteousness. 
Man is standing on Mount Ebal, death ; just opposite rises 
Gerizim, life. Read in a new light Deuteronomy xxviii, 
and you will see whence cometh all the bodily diseases 
in the world; you will also see the folly and blindness of 
expecting man to be healed, or made immune, by either 
inward or outward material remedies. 

If it is right to stop sinning, it is right to stop dying, 
for the "wages of sin is death," and we thus "abolish 
Sunday funerals" and every other day funerals. Our 
Lord protested against funeral processions when He 
stopped the widow of Nain and raised her son. Only 
those who are declaring life here and now are hastening 
the Lord of Life's coming, and not those who are expect- 
ing death and declaring it to be inevitable, who thought- 
lessly call cases incurable when they have never been 
laid before our Lord (Life) in prayer. 

So we shall live forever, as terrible as that seemed to 
be to one good woman, who protested, saying : "But think 
of the numberless saints who have died and are asleep 
in Jesus. My own saintly mother died in the true faith, 
and I am willing to go as she went." If we had clung 
to that idea in all reforms, what progress would the 
world have made? If we had been satisfied with the 
rushlight, there never would have come the candle. And 



20 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

so on, from candle to lamp, from lamp to gas, and then 
to electricity. Shall we say electricity is the last? 

Our Lord "groaned in the spirit and was troubled" 
at just such clinging to a dead faith in the case of Laza- 
rus. When he said, "Thy brother shall rise again, Mar- 
tha said unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the 
resurrection at the last day." Martha's reply is being 
emphasized and perpetuated today. But what of our 
Lord's answer, which was for Lazarus' physical body on 
this earth? "I am the resurrection and the life; he that 
believeth in me, though he have died (R. V.), yet shall 
he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die. Believest thou this?" And He raised Laza- 
rus' body. 

Why is this so persistently taught as referring to the 
soul in some other place, when in this case Jesus emphat- 
ically taught that it is for the body as well as the soul on 
this earth? 

Shall we say "by searching we cannot find out God? 
cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection" ? Job did 
not say so; he simply asked the question. Job searched, 
and did find Him in his flesh. Our Lord said, "Be ye 
perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Did 
He mean it? Shall we say that it is empty theorizing? 
That we must get to heaven ere we get these things that 
eye hath not yet seen, nor the heart of man yet con- 
ceived ? 

The true answer is, that we do not get these things 
when we get to heaven, but getting these things is heaven. 
"And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never 
die. Believest thou this" reader? "He that hath an ear, 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 21 

let him hear what the Spirit (not man) saith unto the 
churches. . . . Behold, the tabernacle of God is with 
men, and He will dwell with them, . . . and there 
shall be no more death." 

"And who is sufficient for these things?" Every 
Christian is responsible for perpetuating the teachings 
of Jesus Christ, and not the ignorance of Martha. 

The Holy Ghost is "bringing these things to our re- 
membrance.". Why is God to tabernacle with men, and 
not to dwell in a temple? Because the temple stands 
still, and the tabernacle moves on— on into more power, 
more glory. We are taught so much of bearing, while 
so much of conquering is left to some future time and 
place. Where would we be if our Lord had only borne 
the cross, and not overcome it? His work was com- 
plete only when He took from the enemy (grave) a per- 
fect body, and transfigured it in the ascension. And 
with this example we question if it is His will that our 
bodies should be delivered from weakness, disease and 
death, which He declared were the bondage of Satan. 
Above all prayers today, we need to pray that the veil, 
cast over our eyes by Satan, shall be removed by Christ's 
teachings and example, and thus have revealed to us His 
law, His will, that sin may no longer reign in our mortal 
bodies. 



CHAPTER II. 

GOD OR MAMMON, LIFE OR DEATH, SIN OR 

RIGHTEOUSNESS, HEALTH OR SICKNESS? 

WHICH SHALL IT BE? 

But first be eager about His kingdom, about what He 
thinks right, and then all these things shall be given to 
you in addition. — Twentieth Century New Testament. 

In philanthropic work and the general betterment of 
humanity there is much of putting the cart before the 
horse, and later finding out the dismal fact that the 
wagon refuses to go. In numberless books and endless 
magazine articles, we are given a bewildering variety of 
possibilities for the physical and mental transformation 
of the human race. These are heralded as veritable 
steps to the millennium. 

One writer tells us of the marvelous physical and men- 
tal results, and youth in old age, of breathing and exer- 
cise combined with a healthy mental state. Another has 
proven that "tent life" will do it all, and a food faddist 
advises a "return to nature and natural foods" as the 
panacea for all ills and the source of a quiet mind. An 
eminent physician gets nearer to the truth when he de- 
clares "it is better to run any unhygienic risks than to 
become absorbed with hygiene," and that "unhealthy 
organs are of less importance than an unhealthy mind." 

Doubtless man is benefited by all of these advisements, 
but they do not fulfill the counsel of our Lord when He 
said, "But first be eager about His kingdom, and about 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 23 

what He thinks right, and then all these things will be 
given to you in addition." When man "abides in the 
secret place of the Most High" he has fulness of breath, 
and deep breathing follows as a logical and automatic 
sequence. When man permits the things of earth to cut 
him off from the Father, fear, anxiety, worry and all 
their evil concomitants cut off his breathing; he only half 
breathes, and then, instead of giving all his attention to 
the physical, if the prodigal would return to his Father 
and His abode, he would restore both body and soul 
through spirit; thus the entire man would be fed, and 
the image and likeness of God brought to light. 

The Christian religion should make true mystics of 
all its followers. True mysticism "excludes all that goes 
under the name of occult; it belongs to religion only, 
and states the fact that the spiritual part of man is so 
constituted by its Maker that it is possible for him to 
have intimate intercourse with God. Mystic movements 
have always existed to emphasize the presence of the 
Divine in man, and to protest against the degradation of 
the spiritual life to a wooden obedience to external au- 
thority." 

"Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord," 
makes us "kings and priests unto God, and we shall reign 
on the earth." From Genesis to Revelation this is the 
rule of life, the spiritual first and the material follows — 
"In the beginning, God." In Eden, Adam and Eve 
talked and walked with God; so also prophets, priests 
and kings. S. John veritably brings heaven to earth, 
showing our angel attendants, and the cry of humanity 
and the answer of God, the Bride and the Bridegroom, 
wedded 



24 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

In the first efforts to attain this promised nuptial, man 
will "eat the bread of adversity and drink the water of 
affliction/' but the promise is true, and not only can be 
realized, but must be, that when man does truly and per- 
sistently "dwell in the secret place of the Most High," 
his "eyes shall see his teachers : and his ears shall hear a 
word, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye 
turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left." 

S. Paul declares that with all the true and loyal follow- 
ers of our Lord Jesus Christ is made a new covenant. 
"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house 
of Israel, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their 
minds, and write them in their hearts : and they shall not 
teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, 
saying, Know the Lord : for all shall know me, from the 
least to the greatest." 

Moses received his laws of hygiene direct from God; 
from that day to this no laws promulgated by man have 
ever superseded them, and one doctor declares that if 
truly followed longevity would rapidly increase. In the 
theological and medical chaos of today, the Bible stands 
supreme as teacher and guide for body and soul — all that 
the whole man needs is found in its pages. The "bread 
of adversity and the water of affliction" are the result 
of the friction of those who have a passion for God, with 
those who are "degrading the spiritual life to a wooden 
obedience to external authority." 

Dissecting the animal kingdom, and watching the 
things below, is not God's plan for the healing of man. 
"Saith the Holy One, lift up your eyes on high, and be- 
hold who hath created these things, that bringeth out 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 25 

their host by number: he calleth them all by names, by 
the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power, 
not one faileth." 

Man can never be permanently benefited by research 
among animals and the creatures of lower kingdoms. 
That which acts one way on a dog or a cat may take the 
opposite course, or even be annulled by man, for the su- 
preme reason that man has a conscience, a mind, and a 
soul, and is the image of his Creator. 

When the viper fastened upon the hand of S. Paul, 
"he shook ofif the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. 
Howbeit, they looked when he should have swollen, or 
fallen down dead suddenly; but after they had looked a 
great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed 
their minds, and said that he was a god." Now S. Paul 
had been only recently converted, hence was still a man 
of passion like others; but there had been a recrudes- 
cence of his faith. He had seen and talked with God, 
and instead of filling himself with poisonous liquors or 
serums, he drew upon the Spirit of life, which cast out, 
or neutralized, the poison of the lower kingdoms. 

This is now, and always will be, the privilege of every 
one who wholly, not half way, believes in our Lord and 
His promises, and to the Christian a spiritual privilege is 
a spiritual duty. "And these signs shall" (not may) 
"follow them that believe. In my name shall they cast 
out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues ; they shall 
take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it 
shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and 
they shall recover." 



26 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Many professing Christians merely read these things,. 
relegate them to the past and to "gods," but do not 
whole-heartedly believe. A missionary related the case 
of a converted African who had gone among the wild 
tribes, and had angered them by loosening their faith in 
gods of stone and wood. He was condemned to drink 
a deadly draught. As he lifted it to his lips, he raised 
his eyes to heaven, and with all his faith cried to the 
Lord : "It is in thy power to prevent this poison working 
in my body. I have been doing thy work, and if Thou 
dost want me in the field Thou wilt save me." The 
draught was as harmless as water, and many were con- 
verted. This is making practical the law of righteous- 
ness. 

The Hebrews believed and practiced this law in the 
ceremony of proving woman's purity. Why is faith to- 
day so devitalized that many Christians feel powerless in 
similar experiences? Is not the God of Jacob still their 
refuge? If, as a writer predicts, "society will some time 
form an amicable conspiracy to suggest the thoughts that 
make for mental and moral health," when will Christians 
determine to league together and "be not afraid of sud- 
den fear" ? 

Pills, pellets, and serums will never wipe disease from 
this earth. Instead of putting poison in the body, the 
poison already in the mind must be drawn out, even the 
poison of envy, hatred and malice, and the deadening 
draughts of doubt and unbelief. The whole situation is 
vividly described in that marvelous and comprehensive 
twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. There may be 
found the rules to obtain the heart's desires on this earth, 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 27 

and the peace that passeth understanding for the soul — 
blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. 

"The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, 
until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither 
thou goest to possess it. 

"The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and 
with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an ex- 
treme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, 
and with mildew: and they shall pursue thee until thou 
perish. 

"The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, 
and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the 
itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. 

"The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blind- 
ness, and astonishment of heart : 

"And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind 
gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy 
ways : and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled ever- 
more, and no man shall save thee." 

In this catalogue of evils we find all the physical and 
mental troubles in the world. The punishment is not 
arbitrary, but a matter of cause and effect. The Lord 
does not tell us to cast them out by filling our bodies with 
poisons from the lower kingdoms, but to turn unto Him, 
and "hearken diligently to His voice." When a beloved 
Bishop commented on an earthquake in terms similar to 
those in Deuteronomy, there were some who demurred. 
The day must dawn when all diseases, all earthquakes, 
all plagues will be placed by believing Christians where 
God places them, and the only true remedy a return to 
righteousness. 



28 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

In a sermon on the demoralizing grafts of today, the 
preacher emphatically declared that when men are truer 
and kinder, and fulfill the law of brotherhood, all sick- 
ness and disease will vanish from the earth. "Then 
stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so (by 
this means) the plague was stayed." The atonement of 
Aaron and the prayers of David stayed plagues ; the arm 
of the Lord was their refuge. 

If the splendid talents, energies and fortunes now given 
to finding more poisons for men's bodies were expended 
in cleaning up slums, building sanitary homes for people 
of small means, and paying better wages to disheartened 
toilers, in other words, loving one's neighbor as one's 
self, the problem of sin and its physical ills would be 
more than half solved, and the peculiar diseases that are 
puzzling earnest doctors would disappear. 

When the sick came to our Lord, He drew them unto 
Himself, poured His virtue into them, and healed all 
manner of sickness and disease, the lame, and the blind. 
That Fountain of healing virtue for men's bodies is "with 
us alway, even unto the end." It is not desirable to 
knock away previously the crutches of the world as man- 
ifested in wise medical or surgical aids, but they are just 
that, only crutches — the world's invention to hold up 
groping man till a greater help comes, even the "ever- 
lasting arms." 

Because the "wideness of God's mercy is like the wide- 
ness of the sea," His love so ready and compassionate, 
and His heart yearns to see the "health of the daughter 
of His people recovered," He lets His blessing descend 
upon the means employed, but it is always His blessing 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 29 

that heals, and not the means employed. The Bible 
teaches this emphatically and persistently. "By grace 
are ye saved through faith," body and soul. Dr. Alfred 
Taylor Schofield, the noted English physician, surgeon 
and psychologist, tells us as much in a recent address on 
the "Limitation of Medical Science and Mental Healing." 
He makes this striking announcement : 

"Now what is a faith cure? Does the cure depend 
upon the faith, or upon the object on which the faith 
rests? If the cure depends upon the intrinsic faith itself, 
it is psychic rather than spiritual in its action. If it de- 
pends upon the extrinsic object on which the faith rests, 
and that object is Divine, the cure is undoubtedly dis- 
tinctly spiritual in its nature, so that a faith cure may 
mean a psychic cure or a spiritual cure. And now I want 
to say something for which, perhaps, some of this audi- 
ence are hardly prepared, but which twenty or more 
years of close, careful and prayerful observation lead me 
to believe is absolutely correct, and it is this : In purely 
physical cures it is the faith that cures. The object on 
which that faith rests is absolutely indifferent to the cure ; 
that is to say, the cure is the same, whatever the ob- 
jective may be before the eye of faith at the time: 
whereas, In all soul and spiritual cures the objective on 
which the faith rests is everything. 

"To illustrate: In physical cures the faith may rest, 
and has rested, on a thermometer in the mouth, on a 
medicine containing nothing but pure water, on the repu- 
tation of a clever doctor, or an impostor, or idols in 
heathen temples. . . . When we understand that in 
physical disease it is the faith that cures and the object 



30 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

on which it rests is indifferent, but in soul and spiritual 
healing the object of the faith is all, we see how it is 
that we get equal physical cures from the bones of mar- 
tyrs, the dead bodies of saints, the imaginary miraculous 
appearances of the Virgin, the Holy Coat of Treves, as 
we do in Christianity. In soul and spiritual cures the 
object is all-important, and for true blessing must be 
Divine." 

In the light of these acknowledgments from so reliable 
a source, that question of our Lord, "when I come again 
shall I find the faith upon the earth?" sinks into the 
Christian's soul with a deeper and more striking signifi- 
cance. Is his faith wholly in the Lord, or partly in Him 
and partly in man's inventions? However deeply em- 
bedded may be the training that sickness is wholly physi- 
cal, for him who truly believes the Bible, and takes that 
Book as his guide and light, there must come the time 
when this wrong training will have to be uprooted. 
Deuteronomy xxviii is a direct inspiration from God, and 
unmincingly declares that all diseases, sicknesses and 
calamities are the result of sin — of omission or commis- 
sion — and that righteousness alone will cleanse from un- 
righteousness and its sequelae, sickness and death. The 
righteousness that exalteth a nation, healeth it. 

"The wages of sin is death" to the body as to the soul ; 
the dying begins in the soul, and the body, which is but 
the expression of the soul, has no choice but to follow 
where the soul leads. "All one body we" explains why 
the infant and the saintly person suffer physically for the 
sins of the world. Every discord, whether physical or 
mental, is felt, however infinitesimally, by the whole crea- 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 31 

tion — "for we know that the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now, . . . wait- 
ing for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our 
body" — the full redemption of the whole man. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ACTION AND POWER OF THE MIND ON THE 
ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS OF THE BODY. 

But I see another law in my members, warring against 
the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the 
lazv of sin which is in my members. — Rom. vii : 25. 

In Romans vi, vii, viii, S. Paul, the psychologist of the 
New Testament, gives us the full law for the redemption 
of the body. All the books that have ever been written 
on psychology and suggestive therapeutics can never 
equal these chapters in fulness and completeness, for 
they all lack the vigorous adjustment of S. Paul's cap- 
sheaf, that supreme and happy climax in the closing 
verses of chapter viii, that only through Jesus Christ, our 
Lord, are we conquerors, and through Him nothing in 
earth or heaven can dismay. 

Body and soul together are necessary for man's in- 
tegrity. By His mighty works in healing the body, our 
Lord taught His unwillingness to sacrifice one to the 
other ; knowing that man must always have a form, that 
form He wished preserved for use, so He commanded 
and empowered His followers to heal the body as well as 
preach to the soul. The church did this for six centuries 



32 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

after the ascension, and one of the Early Fathers de- 
clared that it was only when the church became un- 
worthy through materialism that our Lord's co-operation 
was withdrawn. 

Irenseus (A. D. 120-202), writing against heresies, 
states : "For they can neither confer sight on the blind, 
nor hearing on the deaf, nor chase away all sorts of 
demons — none, indeed — except those that are sent into 
others by themselves, if they can even do so much as this. 
Nor can they cure the weak, or the lame, or the para- 
lytic, or those who are distressed in any other part of the 
body, as has often been done in regard to bodily infirm- 
ity. Nor can they furnish effective remedies for those 
external accidents which occur. And so far are they 
from being able to raise the dead, as the Lord raised 
them, and the apostles did by means of prayer, and has 
been frequently done in the brotherhood on account of 
some necessity — the entire church in that particular local- 
ity entreating (the boon) with much fasting and prayer, 
and the spirit of the dead has returned, and he has been 
bestowed in answer to the prayers of the saints — that 
they do not even believe this can possibly be done (and 
hold) that the resurrection from the dead (II Tim. ii: 
17, 18) is simply an acquaintance with that truth which 
they proclaim." 

As nature abhors a vacuum, an unused place, so God 
abhors unused power. Since the church has failed to 
use the legacy left by our Lord, it is being explained and 
utilized by material scientists, who are writing volumes 
on the place and power of mind; in many cases leaving 
out our Lord so completely that the soul is being con- 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 33 

fused and prostituted by the human will working for 
earth alone. The church is responsible for this confu- 
sion. 

Man is a trinity — mind, soul, and spirit; these, though 
allied, are not identical ; they differ in degree ; the mental 
functionings are so wonderful and satisfying, that the 
man who is submerged in mind alone is in danger of be- 
coming imbued with the idea that he does not need a 
God, and certainly no special Saviour of the world is re- 
quired. Just here is where the church can step in and 
convince man that though his body may be apparently 
healthy and strong temporarily through will-power, yet, 
for his perfect integrity and future well-being, his soul 
must be fed by the living God, the "Power, not his own, 
that maketh for righteousness." 

Christians should know the practical and physiological 
truth that is voiced in S. Paul's philosophy of the law of 
mind working in the body. Freedom and transfigura- 
tion for the whole man is S. Paul's slogan. Just as man 
begins with creeping, ere he walks and runs, so in our 
orderly approach to God we begin with the law of mind. 
"As a man thinketh, so is he" in body and soul, declared 
Job, and he proved it. While his thoughts were waver- 
ing, and his mind was confused by well-meaning friends 
(many Christians would progress more rapidly if deliv- 
ered from some of their friends), the disease in his body, 
which was from Satan, triumphed ; but when in despera- 
tion, instead of cursing God, he cried, "Though He slay 
me yet will I trust Him," he was delivered by the strength 
of his mind and the power of his words from a most 
loathsome form of leprosy. 
3 



34 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Psychotherapy, suggestive therapeutics, and the like 
are the mental John-the-Baptist, the washing, the cleans- 
ing process ; the voice crying in the mental wilderness of 
earthy, rebellious thought, "prepare ye the way of the 
Lord, make His paths straight." Jesus said, "Elias truly 
shall first come and restore all things." So these laws 
of psychology enable us to wash away worry, hurry, envy, 
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness ; the wind, the 
earthquake and the fire are no more; then is man fit and 
ready to hear the still, small voice — the path is made 
straight for the Lord to come with His healing. 

Whether few or many understand, we are facing the 
fact that mental and spiritual healing is upon us. It is 
traversing the globe, attended with good and healthful 
results. The problem is not solved, nor is the subject 
dismissed by stolid indifference, denial and scoffing. The 
power of mind over matter is becoming a trite expression, 
but, like all such abstract statements, it is repeated parrot- 
like for a long while ere the majority recognizes it as a 
law that can be grasped and utilized in daily life, from 
the most trivial acts to events of signal importance. The 
power of Spirit over both mind and matter is not so 
clearly seen nor willingly admitted. 

Morse and Marconi, delving amidst subtle forces, were 
scoffed and called dreamers. Men forgot that it has ever 
been the dreamers who have gone before, fed the famine- 
stricken, set the people free, and brought them into a land 
of milk and honey. As God was with Moses, Joseph, 
and others, so will He ever uphold the dreamers who are 
willing to meet derision in order to give life more abun- 
dant. We cannot reckon the number of lives saved by 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 35 

Morse and Marconi. More refined, more subtle their 
modes of reception and utilization of unseen forces ; less 
and less dependence upon externals. 

Now that quietly daring and wonderful Marconi, along 
with others, is telling us of telepathy ; no mechanical de- 
vice of man's hands at either end, no visible wires. 
Again the people begin to smile, but that smile, here and 
there, is dying on their lips, or at least held in abeyance. 
Wonderful things are coming so swiftly, marvelous re- 
sults are so recent. No one wants to be found on the 
losing side, and so we wait. Less and less dependence 
upon externals, more and more dependence upon the 
direct arm of God. Closer communion with the Lord 
and Giver of life; more unwavering abiding under the 
shadow of the Almighty — conditions fulfilled and the 
promised exemption from plague and pestilence, "they 
shall not come nigh thy dwelling" (body, R. V.). A 
veritable passover for body and soul. 

The root of life is character; character is habits, and 
the home of habits is the mind; hence mind is the first 
rung of the ladder, the starting point to higher things. 
We may not yet know the how, but we are daily proving 
the results of weak and strong emotions on the body. 
Fear is the basis of all destructive emotions, all troubles, 
mental and physical. Doubt, fear, apprehension, and 
expressions of these are disintegrating; they always 
weaken and tear down tissues and organs. They will 
loosen internal walls, and when organs have fallen, there 
is no internal or external remedy that can equal the con- 
structive and restorative power of hope, courage, joyful 
expectation and a close communion with God in building 
up these walls and replacing the organs. 



36 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Many operations for these things are a desecration to 
the "temple of the Holy Ghost." We are almost losing 
sight of the sacredness of the body when we allow it to 
be rushed to the operating table under the slightest pre- 
tense. Wise physicians are recognizing this, and in 
papers and magazines are deploring the operating mania. 
It would seem as if man is presuming to know better than 
God what man should have in his body. 

Dr. A. T. Schofield, in a recent lecture, said: "There 
can be no doubt that all disease is partly caused and partly 
cured by mind. In this I do not limit my statement to 
functional disease at all. The distinction between func- 
tional and organic disease is, in its last analysis, merely 
a confession of our own ignorance, for there can be no 
doubt that there can be no organic disease without func- 
tional disturbance, and there can be no functional de- 
rangement without at the bottom some organic change. 
As proof that mental healing has power over material 
disease, I may instance the wonderful power it has over 
the painfully prosaic and plebeian disease, if you may 
call it disease, or affliction, of warts. These have shown 
themselves from the earliest times peculiarly susceptible 
to mental influence from some cause as yet unknown to 
us. Varicose veins also may be mentioned among other 
organic diseases as in many cases having been cured, as 
far as we know, by mental therapeutics only. Tumors, 
too, of all sorts, seem amenable to this power. I know 
of fifty cases of internal tumors sent into a London hos- 
pital for operation, certified as being tumors requiring 
operation by medical men of skill and experience, and not 
one of them required operation, and all of them disap- 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 37 

peared under the most simple treatment. I, myself, was 
the means of causing one to disappear, and I saw how 
remarkably the whole large, pulsating tumor absolutely 
vanished." 

Facing the frightful increase in suicides and man- 
slaughter amongst children and adults, an evidence of 
the lower valuation of the body, the statement, so often 
made, even by ministers, that bodily healing is made too 
much of, should be revised. Pulpit and pew aid, abet 
and encourage more hospitals, sanitariums, institutes for 
research, and everything of man's device for relieving 
effects ; but let an institute, or body of people, rise up 
for the spiritual healing of our Lord, which alone can 
touch the cause of any trouble or derangement of body 
or mind, and the hue and cry go forth, "You make too 
much of bodily healing; the soul is more important than 
the body." 

Says Mr. J. M. Hickson, of London: "Let us look at 
the question from a purely practical point of view. What 
do we do when any one belonging to us is ill ? We send 
for the doctor and do all we can for the recovery of the 
sick person. We assume at once, without question, that 
the patient should be made well as soon as possible. We 
do not first deliberate whether it is God's will that he 
should be healed; we do not say that it may be God's 
will he should continue to suffer ; no, we do all we can to 
relieve his suffering. How, then, is it, when we come 
to the question of healing by spiritual means, we imme- 
diately begin to ask if it is God's will he should be healed; 
why do we hesitate to use the very means which our Lord 
enjoined to be used in the case of the sick? Does not 



38 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

the very fact that His life was a ministry of healing prove 
to us that His will is to do now, through His servants, 
what He Himself did in person in the days of His visible 
Presence among us ? If it is doubtful whether we should 
use spiritual means of healing, it must be still more 
doubtful whether we should use physical means, which 
have not been enjoined upon us as Christians at all." 

Rev. G. P. Trevelyan, Vicar of S. Alban's, England, 
says: "A very large number of people have undoubtedly 
been cured of both organic and functional diseases apart 
from the use of the ordinary methods employed by the 
medical and surgical professions. The people who have 
been able to exercise such healing give different accounts 
of their power. Some of them find the explanation of 
that power in physical characteristics within themselves, 
by which they are able to influence the mind of the suf- 
ferer and strengthen it to cast off disease. These are 
generally spoken of as 'mental healers,' and the method 
they employ is called 'suggestion.' The term 'spiritual 
healer' is applied to those who look upon the effects which 
they are able to produce as the result of prayer and the 
mission of our Lord Jesus Christ to heal. It would be 
well to include under the term 'spiritual healer' the work 
of all those who believe that they are the means of bring- 
ing our Lord into contact with the patients, that His life 
may flow out to them for healing, and under 'mental 
healing' the work of those whose chief concern is with 
certain natural powers within themselves which have 
effect in the arrest and conquest of disease." 

It is a psychological maxim that "every mental repre- 
sentation is followed by a physical sensation." As a 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 39 

free, moral agent, man can think constructively or de- 
structively; health or disease, life or death; but when he 
has allowed himself to fall into the constant habit of 
fear, evil and worry, it is worse than useless to tell him 
not to do these things; it is as aggravating as to tell an 
angry man not to get angry. The law of substitution is 
his only salvation. Doctor Gulick declares: "Nobody 
stops worrying by good resolutions — the mind does not 
work that way. Act the way a cheerful man should act, 
talk and walk cheerfully, eat what a cheerful man eats, 
and after a time the emotion slips into line with the as- 
sumed attitude, and man becomes what he has been pre- 
tending." "Let the weak say, I am strong" (Joel iii: 10), 
means just this. 

Doctor Gulick continues : "Exchanging symptoms is a 
vicious pastime, and makes symptoms worse; it is con- 
tagious and gives them to other people by suggestion; 
. . . no part of the body, except the muscular system, 
is so much affected by states of mind as the digestive and 
excretory organs; . . . discouragement and low 
spirits lead to constipation," showing that mind is con- 
stipated before the body. 

A noted Chicago minister preached a sermon on the 
good effect of hearty laughter. He bade sick people 
laugh, jiggle the diaphragm, and get well. A hearty 
laugh produces that "alternate contraction and relaxation 
which is one of the main factors in keeping the liver 
working well." The stomach is exceedingly sensitive 
to mental feelings of disgust and satisfaction. Never 
relate or remark at the table anything discordant of 
affairs, food, or body. Never ask a guest, or member 



40 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

of a family, when coming to the table, how he feels, if 
he slept well, or if he has an appetite. Take these things 
for granted, and that he comes to the table as a Christian, 
to obey the Christian's mandate, to "eat what is set be- 
fore him for conscience sake," and know that he "has 
power to eat and to drink" (I Cor. ix: 4). There are so 
many delightful and invigorating subjects which one can 
discuss with benefit, that it is inexcusable at meal times 
to bring up subjects that tend to undermine and disin- 
tegrate the body. 

A good man and pillar of his church, while on a visit 
to some friends, was asked to pronounce the blessing 
before meals; it was helpful, but lengthy. God's mercy 
and loving care were extolled. He was asked to bless 
all food with health and strength for the body and the 
day's work, and to bless all who received it. Then that 
good man, thinking he was trusting God and His prom- 
ises, would take for his portion a small piece of bread 
and a few drops of gravy. He feared offending his di- 
gestive organs more than he feared God. The hostess, 
who did her own housework and tried to place before the 
guest the most tempting viands, grew righteously indig- 
nant, and exclaimed to a member of the family, "If I 
said a blessing like that, I'd show that I tried to trust 
God by eating something, if I had a pain in my stomach 
for a month." 

Some of us who are truly trying to be Christians hesi- 
tate before going from house to house with some sad, 
shocking tale of our neighbor's weakness or dereliction ; 
some of us hesitate to open the closet door of the family 
skeleton to every passer-by; yet with seeming gusto and 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 41 

delight we fairly rush to each other's arms, and rolling 
them like sweet morsels under the tongue, relate in tire- 
some and fatal detail the aches, pains and diseases of 
every member of the family and the neighborhood — igno- 
rant of the fact that, by the law of suggestion, fear is 
implanted; and if the picture of the disease is held long 
and seriously enough, that is all the microbe and germ 
that you need. Job tells you so : "the thing that I greatly 
feared has come upon me." All thought tends to ma- 
terialize. "For thoughts are things, endowed with 
bodies, breath and wings," says a bright metaphysical 
writer. 

A student of metaphysics, who had been cured of a 
disgusting trouble, was relating how bad she had been, 
what she had done, and how she had been cured. During 
the recitation she began to show every symptom of the 
trouble. She stopped, laughed, and said: "There, you 
see what suggestion will do. I know that I am cured of 
that trouble, and yet I am so suggestible that the rela- 
tion of it gives me the surface symptoms." The lady to 
whom she was relating it replied: "I do not intend that 
you shall hand it over to me, but this experience should 
prove to you the weakness and the wickedness of ever 
again relating that trouble in detail as you have just 
done." 

It was on this principle that our Lord bade those whom 
He healed "tell no man," until the cure was thoroughly 
established in mind and body. 

A lady studying in a public library had her attention 
drawn to a woman who came in sniffling; knowing the 
law of psychical contagion, she declared to herself em- 



42 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

phatically, "I do not intend to do that; that trouble shall 
not be transferred to me." Soon another woman came 
in, and the sniffler went over and sat near her. In a few 
minutes the second woman began to sniffle, and the first 
one ceased almost entirely. She seemed to have been 
released when the other woman was weak or ignorant 
enough to accept her cast-off bondage. Then the sniffler 
left the room apparently greatly relieved, and the second 
woman ceased sniffling. This is the law that works in 
all physical contagion. 

Doctor Dubois declares : "A mental suggestion creates 
a sensation just as long as it is not dissipated by a con- 
trary auto-suggestion ; . . . properly speaking, there 
is no physical suffering; it is always psychic. . . , 
There are those who are so impressionable, that on hear- 
ing of a malady they at once feel the symptoms ; . . . 
nobody is absolutely refractory to suggestion. Educa- 
tion only will deliver. Reason is the sieve which stops 
unhealthy suggestions, and allows only those to pass 
which lead us in the way of truth. . . . The battle 
against all this is one of moral resistance, and not of 
physical health!' 

A young girl was approached by another who began to 
relate a mutual friend's illness. Remembering her own 
discomfort with a similar attack, she begged the girl to 
desist; this caused amusement, and details were thrust 
upon her. Putting her fingers in her ears, she began to 
run ; the other girl followed, crying out the name of the 
disease as she ran. In a week or more the annoyed girl 
was seized with the trouble. The physician who was 
called in, knowing she had once had it, and never having 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 43 

heard of a second attack, concluded it must be something 
worse ; a consultation of physicians pronounced it the 
same old trouble. That young woman has since learned 
that a "mental suggestion creates a sensation just as long 
as it is not dissipated by a contrary auto-suggestion," and 
that "the thing that she greatly fears will come upon 
her," She is wiser, hence stronger. 

There is a suggestive or psychical stage to all diseases ; 
if taken in. time the disease will never become physical. 
A young girl who had been coughing for some days was 
discovered by her mother to be in the first stages of 
whooping-cough. Knowing the truth of Sir John 
Forbes' statement that "means acting directly on the 
mind are fully as powerful and effective in disease of a 
purely bodily character as in mental disease," the Lord's 
Prayer was repeated morning and evening by mother 
and daughter, for the specific purpose of bringing to pass 
the "Lord's will on earth as in heaven" in this case ; also 
there was read Psalm xci, which was assimilated and put 
into practice. In another week every vestige of the 
whooping-cough had disappeared. 

On the discovery of the trouble the mother said to her 
son, very firmly, "See to it that you do not let this thing 
come upon you." He replied: "I have already done so. 
It attacked me yesterday, and I conquered." These chil- 
dren never had any of the diseases peculiar to childhood, 
solely because they were kept "dwelling in the secret 
place of the Most High," where "nothing that maketh or 
worketh a lie can enter." "The battle against all this is 
one of moral resistance, and not of physical health/ 3 



44 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

In discussing moving-picture shows and their baneful 
influence upon the youthful mind, parents should take to 
heart the tremendous import of the law of psychology 
that "every mental representation is followed by a physi- 
cal sensation." A gentleman stepped into one of these 
shows for the purpose of learning the nature of the sub- 
jects dispensed to the many children who frequented the 
place. In one of the pictures the cruelty to creatures of 
the lower world was so revolting that he came out nau- 
seated. 

Let parents consider such effects, and it will explain 
many physical disorders for which they cannot account. 
It should also suggest a scarcity of nickels to feed the 
poisoning of the minds and bodies of their offspring. 

Aside from any temporary discomfort, the effect 
reaches much further. Each generation is making the 
standard for the next. Today we find children, from the 
smallest tot up, fed the excitement of a lower order of 
things, and we rarely see a child who is able to sit still 
for fifteen minutes and listen with pleasure to anything 
calming, enlightening and spiritualizing. 

We fondly fancy that we are wonderfully in advance 
of the ancient Greeks in all that pertains to the world's 
progress, but how many prospective mothers take heed 
to behold daily some beautiful ideal in painting, sculpture, 
and such, that the next generation may be perfectly 
moulded in face and form. The Greeks knew that 
"every mental representation is followed by a physical 
sensation," and lived up to it. Children who are fed on 
excitement and low ideals are not apt to "lift up their 
eyes unto the hills" when parenthood comes upon them. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 45 

In moulding youthful temperaments, the practical im- 
port of the law of the human mind declared by S. Paul, 
"I find then a law, that when I would do good evil is 
present with me," is a powerful factor in solving the 
problem of Christian discipline. All true mothers early 
recognize wrong tendencies, and they will find that dis- 
cipline is expedited and rendered more effective if they 
will more generally supplant the nagging and tiresome 
"Do not that" for "Do this." Thus the "evil that is pres- 
ent" is not aroused and exhibited, and the "law that 
would do good" is fed and strengthened. 

The carnal enslaves; the spiritual giveth life and free- 
dom. Spinoza epigrammatically states it : "Acting under 
the notion of the bad is slavery ; under the notion of the 
good, freedom." Children may be reared slaves or free- 
men. The child, just from heaven, can be early accus- 
tomed to seek the things of its natural habitat. 

A man who had just moved into his new home was 
annoyed by a neighbor's children running on the newly 
planted grass. He stretched a wire between his lawn 
and the adjacent one, but, being low enough for the boys 
to step over, the nuisance continued. One day the larger 
lad said gleefully to a lady in whom he had much confi- 
dence: "Doctor M — thinks he can keep us out by that 
wire, but we can step over it." 

"O, no," quietly and impressively the lady replied; 
"Doctor M — knew that you could step over the wire, but 
he thought you were a good little boy, who wanted his 
yard to look pretty like yours. He thought you forgot 
sometimes, so he put the wire there to help you remem- 
ber ; and then he knew you would be glad to keep off and 
help the little grass blades to grow green and happy." 



46 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

As he listened, his face grew first serious, then bright, 
as the happy green grass was mentioned. It was the end 
of the trespassing. The "notion of the good" had tri- 
umphed. The spiritual arose above the carnal, and the 
child of God was one step nearer freedom. 

There are mental and physical ailments that will never 
yield to a merely cheerful philosophy or any form of 
psychotherapy, but which can be vanquished by deeply 
spiritual means, when that "grace by which we are saved, 
through faith," is allowed to pour into the whole being, 
body and soul — that healing "virtue" which our Lord 
"perceived" had entered into the long-suffering woman 
of true and abiding faith. 

It is possible for a mental practitioner to believe in his 
own mind and its powers, and yet declare himself an 
agnostic in regard to the truly spiritual and deep things 
of God. Mental powers may temporarily alleviate the 
discords of the body, and draw man to man, but they 
may never attempt to unite man with God, the meaning 
of true religion — a binding back to God. The forces of 
mind are good and valuable, and we are not to under- 
estimate the therapeutic value of cheerful thoughts and 
expressions. The Psalmist gave us the unchanging law 
of suggestive therapeutics when he said, "A merry heart 
doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth 
the bones." A real thing has permeated the system, far 
more real and lasting than any internal or external rem- 
edy which the eyes behold. 

The Great Physician warned us of the present day's 
exhibition of mental forces when He declared: "Many 
will say to me, in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 47 

prophesied in thy name ? And in thy name have cast out 
devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; 
depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Here we have 
a strong and striking denunciation of wonderful works 
that gave a temporary relief to man. It is an imperative 
demand upon the church to safeguard the true healing 
of our Lord. 



CHAPTER IV. 

JESUS CHRIST OUR ONLY HEALER, THE SAVIOUR 
OF THE WHOLE MAN— BODY AND SOUL. 

He sent his Word and healed them, and delivered 
them from their destructions. — Ps. 107: 20. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God. . . . In him was 
life, and the life was the light of men. . . . And the 
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. — S. John 1 : 

1, 4, 14- 

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy 
diseases. — Ps. 103 : 3. 

Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop; but a 
good word maketh it glad. — Prov. 12 : 25. 

A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth; and a 
word spoken in due season, how good it is. — Ps. 15: 23. 

The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and 
they are life. — S. John 6: 63. 

When the "earth was without form and void, and dark- 
ness was upon the face of the deep, God said," and His 



48 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Word created the world and man. The things which 
the Word created were "very good." When man speaks 
"health" understanding^ and in His Name, the Word 
creates health. So with "death," so with "life"— "each 
yielding fruit after its kind." This is the law of the 
Word. "It is written." 

"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom 
the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all 
things, and bring all things to your remembrance, what- 
soever I have said unto you. . . . And now I have 
told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to 
pass, ye might believe." — S. John 14 : 26, 29. 

"Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show 
John again those things which ye do hear and see: The 
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers 
are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, 
and the poor have the gospel preached unto them. And 
blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." — 
S. Matt. 11: 4, 5, 6. 

He sent to the imprisoned John this message of heal- 
ing for the body and gospel for the soul as an evidence 
of the presence among men of the only Christ. He is 
sending this message to the bodily imprisoned Johns of 
today. "It was by His works of healing, almost in the 
forefront of His work, that our Lord taught us to esti- 
mate the power of His Presence with us now. Our pres- 
ent faith in our Lord is a true estimate of those powers 
of His which are hidden from the view of the unbe- 
liever." 

Says Rev. G. P. Trevelyan: "There can be no doubt 
that our Lord willed to mark His work amongst men 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 49 

very strongly indeed with the character of healing. No 
one can rise from the study of the gospels without the 
idea that He willed to leave men with this impression of 
His ministry. We feel, also, that the character mani- 
fested in the gospels was meant to be the manifestation 
of what He is to all time. It seems impossible to think 
that He showed Himself then as the Healer of bodies, 
but wishes us to think of Him exclusively as the Healer 
of souls now. He says no word to make us think that 
He willed to put off this character, when He should be 
with us even unto the end of the world through the com- 
ing of God, the Holy Ghost, in the church. 

"If He had willed to do so, we can hardly think that 
He would have sent His apostles out to heal. In the 
forefront of His commission to them comes first the com- 
mand to preach the good news that the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand. Then comes, 'Heal the sick, raise the 
dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils.' . . . That 
our Lord willed His apostles after the coming of the 
kingdom on the first Whitsunday to continue the practice 
of healing, we learn from the frank assurance with which 
they healed in the name of Christ. It seems the most nat- 
ural thing in the world that the Name of Jesus through 
faith in His Name should be the means of restoring to 
perfect soundness the lame man healed by S. Peter and 
S. John. The other works of healing in The Acts bear 
the same mark of its being considered a natural result of 
our Lord's work of love for man that His church should 
minister the blessing of health to those capable of receiv- 
ing it. . . . It did not apparently come into the mind 
of the church for many centuries that the power to heal 
would be withdrawn." 
4 



50 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

This revival of healing is the dispensation of the Holy- 
Ghost, of whom we hear so little preached. Our Lord 
knew that many would be offended when reminded of 
the necessity for its revival. It is singular that devout 
church people seem to be the ones most offended. 

"The church is constantly tempted," says Bishop John- 
son, of California, "to rely upon secondary influence to 
advance her interests. When she has felt the protecting 
arm of the State shielding her from poverty and giving 
her distinction in the world ; when she has been conscious 
of the patronage of wealth and society, she has not felt 
the same necessity for the development of spiritual forces 
to give her standing as she did when they alone secured 
her reverence and respect. 

"And consequently a sort of spiritual atrophy has set- 
tled down upon the lives of many Christian men, and 
they have been surprised when they have been confronted 
with facts which should be familiar because, by Christ's 
pledge, they should be of common occurrence. 

"So far from being amazed by the phenomena which 
have turned attention to healing movements, it would 
seem that the history of the Christian church should lead 
us to expect them, and that we should rather be surprised 
that in Christian society everywhere they were not the 
usual thing and not the occasional incident. If what we 
find upon almost every page of Scripture be true, and, 
further, if the church in her prayer-book be delivering 
to us a vital message, then the gospel of Jesus is a gospel 
of Divine healing in the largest and fullest sense of that 
term." 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 51 

The wiles of the devil are befogging the minds of 
many good people. The Law, the Psalms, and the 
Prophets are replete with "thus saith the Lord," which 
declares Him the Healer of the whole man. In the gen- 
eral preaching and teaching the soul is brought forward 
so prominently that the body is almost completely left 
out. .We are reminded constantly of the seas and wilder- 
ness of doubt and unbelief through which the world is 
passing. Never did the Israelites need, more than we, 
the promises of God while being tested, in body and soul, 
as we are today, with puzzling diseases, unsettling creeds 
and no creeds. "If thou wilt diligently hearken to the 
voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt give ear to His com- 
mandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of 
these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the 
Egyptians : for I am the Lord that healeth thee." 

When the people had turned more and more to the 
gods of the world, and the darkness grew so dense that 
they could not see God as the Healer, our Lord, the 
Word, came in the flesh, and by His example brought the 
promises to men's remembrance. He delivered men's 
bodies from the sins of their souls. Now the Holy Ghost 
is come, fulfilling His office of reminding us of the power, 
purpose and presence of Christ. His own receiving Him 
not, He has turned to the Gentiles. 

Pulpit and press have turned a deaf ear to the message 
of the revival of Divine healing. When doctors so gen- 
erally agree that they are giving less and less drugs, that 
it is the faith that heals,' and the power of mind is so 
demonstrable, the children of light are facing the anom- 
aly of getting instruction from the children of darkness. 



52 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Indeed is "God choosing the foolish things of the world 
to confound the wise." 

It is so old fashioned to preach hells and devils, that 
those who hold firmly to the true teaching of the Scrip- 
tures are looked upon as worse than freaks — they are 
veritable stumbling-blocks to glory. The pendulum of 
human thought, struck a ringing blow, swung to the 
fierce extreme of trying to force men into the kingdom 
of heaven by a paralyzing fear of the power of Satan. 
The other extreme sweeps away completely all devils 
and hells, and floats sinners on rose-leaved clouds of 
physical health into a haven where all is good. 

The first extreme contained truth ; the last wipes away 
every vestige of our Lord's temptation, His teachings, 
His purpose, and His warnings. He healed those who 
were oppressed with the devil. Those who did not sin 
directly and knowingly, suffered from the sins of the 
world — "all one body we." Diseases were "rebuked." 
Today we speak of the "battle" with disease, and dis- 
eases "attacking." Nothing but the "wiles of the devil" 
could have blinded us so long. S. Paul knew it was all 
the devil's work; his own "thorn in the flesh" is unspar- 
ingly recognized as a "messenger of Satan to buffet." 
He explains it fully and gives the only protection in Eph. 
6: 10-18. "For our struggle is not against enemies of 
flesh and blood, but against the powers of evil, against 
those who hold sway in the darkness around us, and 
against the spirits of wickedness on high" (Twentieth 
Century Version) . 

There is a healthful and helpful view which we can 
take of devils and hells. Our Lord taught that we were 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 53 

to meet the temptations of evil, not with fear, but in His 
strength, and the "power of His might." We see hells 
of every grade all about us, and the general teaching, in 
which is truth, that leaving the body behind does not 
leave the sin behind, perpetuates these hells. It is pri- 
marily a state of mind ; it is also a locality, as much as 
our dwelling here is a locality. 

We do not get rid of the devil by changing his name; 
under any name he is the same old deceiver, "walking 
about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." 
Do we believe this warning of S. Peter? Do we believe 
him when he said of our Lord (while His body lay in 
the tomb), "By which (the Spirit) He went and preached 
unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were diso- 
bedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in 
the days of Noah." — I Pet. 3 : 19, 20. 

"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is 
none other name under heaven given among men, 
whereby we must be saved." We meet evil, not with 
namby-pamby sentimentalism which calls everything 
good, but with new understanding and power, knowing 
that "God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of 
power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 

That old hymn, which seems to disgust the squeamish 
who cannot stand Satan, is fraught with truth — "There 
is a Fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's 
veins." That healing Fountain is the "virtue" that went 
forth from our Lord, and healed the body of the long- 
suffering woman. The steps she took, we must take. 
She first heard, then followed, then touched. Today we 
half hear, half follow, and but rarely touch: "As many 



54 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

as touched were made perfectly whole." We let the 
crowds, the multitude, the angry looks dismay us. We 
let come between us and our Lord the general, blind 
teaching that Christ's direct healing touch was for sin- 
ners of the past, and to show His Divinity: that disease 
in the flesh is suffering with Him. Our Lord had no 
diseases ; He took them away and destroyed them. The 
Via Dolorosa is the anguish of the soul for the sins of 
the world and the temporary triumph of Satan. This 
is the only suffering the true Christian should endure, 
and he is surely less able to endure these things in a dis- 
eased body than in a strong, well one. 

"There are in our churches myriads of unstable Chris- 
tians, who speak lightly of Satan, call him by jocular 
titles, and laugh at the possibility of his relation to them ; 
there are numbers of well-meaning believers who say, 
T do not know anything about the devil, and I do not 
want to.' The while the organized, systematized, com- 
pacted and discipline^ forces of Satan are pressing 
through the 'gates of hell' to instigate to crime, to plague 
with disease, to blind with deceptions, and to rob the 
saints of God of their heritage by perverting the evident 
truth of the Word. 

"Let us be ever responsive to the Spirit's promptings 
to see in the perplexing and trying experiences of daily 
life the personal touch of our enemy and His ; and let us 
be qualified with the resistance that will always cause us 
to triumph in our Redeemer and Saviour. This unques- 
tioning recognition of Satan as the source and operation 
of disease leads us away from the inherited and culti- 
vated way we have of trying to find some local reason 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 55 

for our infirmities or attacks." From the manger to the 
cross it was a struggle with the "prince of this world." 
"This is your hour and the power of darkness," he said 
in Gethsemane. 

There is much that is taught in the name of Christian- 
ity which must be revised. It must grieve our Lord to 
hear His struggling followers, blinded by Satan, teaching 
that sickness and pain, used by us with patience and love 
to God and meek submission to His will, will prove to be 
angels of mercy in disguise, and that only those who 
suffer thus are made strong. If so, why try to annul 
God's will by sending for the doctor? Why not enter- 
tain these angels of mercy a little longer? Satan flour- 
ishes on these expressions. 

Every act and statement of our Lord justifies us in 
knowing that it is His will for man to have a healthy 
body. He healed Peter's wife's mother that she might 
get up and minister unto them. He wants us for use, 
not disuse. It was, "Arise and eat," "Go," "Take up thy 
bed and walk." They were to act — make themselves 
useful in the world. Nothing delights Satan more than 
to see a lot of good, bright Christians, who could be a 
power for Christ, disabled and bed-ridden. 

Jesus healed "all manner of sickness and disease." 
We have no hint in His teachings that a single case was 
left unhealed, or that the vilest sinner was told to suffer 
a little longer, that he might be stronger. The Evil One 
has planted this seed in the Lord's vineyard, for he knows 
how God's will on earth, as in heaven, is being hindered 
and delayed by the sickness and death of good people 
whom he has blinded. 



56 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Our faith is much more vital when it conquers sick- 
ness than when it merely helps us to bear it. We are to 
bear only until we conquer. If our Lord were walking 
in the flesh with us today, what Christian would stop to 
ask if it were His will he be healed? He would believe, 
"Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out," 
body or soul. 

A noted archdeacon declared, "We are on the eve of a 
judgment. Jesus is soon to come." We hasten His 
coming by teaching life; if we hold on to life it may be 
that we shall abide until His coming, and the body, 
"transformed (transfigured, literally) by the renewing 
of the mind," shall be "changed in the twinkling of an 
eye," and never see corruption. What is corruption? 
The last stage of sin — the last blow of Satan. Is the 
body God's handiwork? Think you He wants it marred 
by sickness and blotted out by corruption? A thousand 
times, no ! 

The grave is not fully and truly robbed of its victory 
so long as the body, which God made, and is the "temple 
of the Holy Ghost," sees corruption. "I will not suffer 
my Holy One to see corruption." This is taken to be 
said of our Lord. What life have we but His? If His 
life preserved His body from corruption, that same Life 
should preserve every body in which it is allowed to flow 
as He wills. Mr. Miiller declared that, when he was 
supposed to be dying, a new influx of life came into his 
body, and he grew strong and well when he thought of 
the coming of the Lord of Life. 

Religious writers admit that Christ's healing had a 
spiritual meaning; that it was part of the great redemp- 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 57 

tive plan, and was to beget and confirm faith in Himself 
as the Divine Messiah. Has the redemptive work ceased, 
or our Lord's plan changed? Is the world saved? If 
not, then the direct contact of our Lord — "virtue" going 
forth from Him to the bodies of men — is necessary now 
for the same purpose. 

There is need today to beget and confirm faith in Him- 
self as the Divine Messiah, when we see the intellect 
deified ; grand old churches voting to relegate to the rear, 
as a "historical relic," the Divinity of our Lord, and good 
people, hungering for bodily healing, leaving the 
churches for weak, wild "isms," cults, and schisms, that 
are taking away our Lord Jesus Christ and giving in 
His place an abstract principle called Christ, divorced 
from Jesus. As we cannot separate body and soul with 
impunity, neither can we separate Jesus from Christ and 
still be Christians. 

The nearness and tenderness of God as a Father can- 
not be satisfactorily realized in an abstract principle. A 
noted divine declares : "This conception of God does not 
give the mind anything in which the thought can termi- 
nate, for thoughts must terminate in something, or they 
are dissipated in the expanse of nature. . . . The 
saving idea of God is, that He is a man" ("No man com- 
eth unto the Father but by Me" — the Divine Humanity, 
Jesus Christ in the flesh). . . . "To think of God 
as a spirit, or principle, without letting that thought 
terminate in person, is to have in reality no idea of God." 

It is a psychological moment for the church, but the 
situation can be met only on the plane of healing. It is 
not true to say that the healing is being done by preach- 



58 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

ing and materia medica. Jails, insane asylums, hos- 
pitals, and sanitariums are filling the land and inade- 
quate to the demand. Preaching to the soul only, pills, 
pellets and serums are not sufficient. The "virtue" from 
our Lord, the blood of the Lamb that cleanses body and 
soul from all unrighteousness, is the only salvation. 

An English clergyman writes: "It is sad that this 
noble thing, Salvation, should have been so narrowed 
amongst Christians as to mean still for many the mere 
plucking of the soul from some future torment. That 
degradation of the word shows how the thought of in- 
ward wholeness has been lost. 

"Salvation means the passing of the entire man into 
the life of God, so that every part of his being is brought 
into harmony with the divine laws ; and for the saved 
the Eternal Life is not only a future reward — it is some- 
thing that has already begun: 'He that hath the Son 
hath life' — something that is proved to have begun al- 
ready by the helpfulness and charity of those who are 
living therein, for 'We know that we have passed out of 
death into life, because we love the brethren.' 

"We may give both kinds of health one name, uniting 
them in the term Salvation. In the original language 
of the New Testament 'to save' is used of the healing 
either of the body or of the spirit ; ... of the body, 
the case of the woman with the issue, 'Thy faith hath 
saved thee ; go in peace' ; of the spirit, the case of the 
woman who was a sinner, 'Thy faith hath saved thee/ 
The same word is used in both cases. . . . Christ 
came to win a double victory over sin and death; He 
brought new life both to spirit and body. The two 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 59 

kinds of salvation were but two sides of one work. . . . 
The impotent man was healed at the gate Beautiful by 
the power of the Christ, because 'in none other is there 
salvation — wherein we must be saved;' and S. James 
says the 'prayer of faith shall save him that is sick.' 

"Both sin and disease are a breach of God's laws, so 
that sin may be called the 'disease' of the soul, and 'sick- 
ness' the sin of the body. ... It would be a small 
thing if grace could do no more for man than surgery. 
When a man is healed by faith of a disease which natural 
means have failed to move, we are in the presence of a 
force more important for humanity than the. most won- 
derful skill of the physician. We have a sign of the 
kingdom of God. 

"We are shown that disease is but the outward mani- 
festation of some inward weakness and failure, so that 
it is possible for the physical results of that weakness to 
be removed by an inward and spiritual restoration. . . . 
The crowning lesson of the evangelical signs is that God 
is the Giver of health, that the spreading of the Gospel 
is the spreading of health." Only this teaching will set 
forth a full and rounded view of the truth. 

A good man writes : "There is death, and sin and 
much pain of both body and mind in the world. Why 
they are here is not for me to say, but I know that with 
death inevitable I have no warrant to pray that all sick- 
ness shall be healed." If, in a new light, this follower 
of Christ will read Deuteronomy xxviii, the Lord will 
tell him why sickness, pain and death are here. It is the 
Word of the Lord that speaks, not of any man. The 
whole of the Old Testament proclaims the source of 



60 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

these discords, and from Sinai was thundered the salva- 
tion from them. 

Unless one lets Satan blind him, the "wayfaring man, 
though a fool, cannot err" in the only and proper inter- 
pretation, and why we are to fight these evils — yes, even 
death itself. God is the "author of peace and lover of 
concord," and though we should have "patience under 
suffering," yet we should also have a "happy issue out 
of all afflictions." It is true that death does come upon 
us, even the death that brings corruption to the body, but 
it is because we let it. The whole (holy ones) do not 
see corruption. We let it because of our ignorance, be- 
cause of the weak teachings on this subject. 

God takes us — rather, the "everlasting arms" catch 
us — as we drop through the trap-door of Satan. Death 
inevitable? Yes, to those who have ears to hear and 
will not hear. "For He must reign till He hath put all 
enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be 
destroyed is death." Are we reigning (ruling) with 
Him, and helping Him to destroy this "enemy" (not a 
friend) when we declare that "death is inevitable"? 
Was Hosea inspired when he wrote, "I will ransom thee 
from the power (hand — Whose hand?) of the grave; I 
will redeem thee from death: O death, I will be thy 
plagues ; O grave, I will be thy destruction" ? 

Are these things to be blotted out in heaven, where 
they do not occur, or on earth, where they do occur? The 
man with the vision of Christ asked what provision He 
had made for the redemption of the world. He replied 
that it was to be through human instrumentality. 

"But suppose men fail?" 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 61 

"I have made no other provision." 

Are we not failing Him (Life) when, contrary to His 
commands and teachings, we encourage people to give 
submissively their bodies to sickness and death because 
they are inevitable? 

A good woman who had suffered physical agony for 
forty years, weary of bearing it, and being sorely needed 
in the home which was provided by a daughter's daily 
labors in a store, went to a friend who believed in the 
healing "virtue" of our Lord. She said that for forty 
years she had prayed to God to help her to bear it. The 
friend said : "Do you not think that you have prayed that 
one prayer long enough? Evidently He has answered 
it, and it should convince you that He will answer a bet- 
ter one. So long as you pray to bear, you will bear. 
Now pray that, through His power, you may conquer." 
It was a revelation to her. She went forth to conquer. 

A clergyman to whom this was related meekly in- 
quired: "Do you think it was kind and right to tell her 
that"? 

We have such a false idea of our Lord's humility — 
"Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world" — con- 
quered, not submitted to. Some one truly says, "So 
prone are mortals to their own damnation, it seems as 
though a devil's use were gone." 

If we teach the full truth, we must emphasize and in- 
sist upon it that, "when God tabernacles with men," and 
He is allowed to "dwell with them, there shall be no more 
pain, no more death." 

Some one says, "It is going too far to say we should 
not die." The reply is, "It is but bringing to your re- 



62 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

membrance the words and promises of God. There must 
come a time on this earth when death shall cease." The 
wages of sin is death: if it is right to stop sinning (and 
all preach that), it is right to stop dying; one lector 
admitted that we should stop dying. 

"Die daily;" "transform (transfigure) the body by re- 
newing the mind, and thus prove the will of God;" be 
ready to have the "body changed in the twinkling of an 
eye." It is a greater presumption to say that the time is 
not now, than to say we should live, and not die. Who 
can say that we might not see the King coming in His 
glory if every Christian united in looking for and de- 
claring life? In union there is success, as well as 
strength. 

Although Joshua had set his face and feet towards 
Gerizim, life, in the flesh he never reached the top ; he 
was dragged down by his brethren whose faces and feet 
were turned to Ebal, death. How long shall those who 
see the truth be hindered in "proving the perfect will of 
God" by scoffing Christians? A woman like Dorcas, 
full of good works, says that those who make her steps 
drag and her soul weary are her own brethren in the 
church. "We know that we have passed from death 
unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth 
not his brother abideth in death." We talk death, be- 
cause we do not talk love. "Death and life are in the 
power of the tongue." — Prov. 18: 21. "For by thy 
words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou 
shalt be condemned." 

The command and legacy of our Lord was to preach 
to the soul, heal the sick bodies, and raise the dead bodies. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 63 

With the Bible open before us, Christians are supposed 
to believe that sick bodies were healed, and dead bodies 
were raised. Shut the Bible and talk of these things, 
and the cry will be "sick in sin," "dead in sin." Did our 
Lord raise Lazarus that way? Did He dispense to Mar- 
tha and Mary the consolation of some other place and 
time? Or did He restore to them their beloved brother, 
strong and well in the flesh? Is church history true that 
tells us of the raising of the dead from the grave for six 
centuries, and that it stopped only when Christians ceased 
loving their brethren? 

O for a recrudescence of our faith that will meet the 
needs of the whole man ! "In Him we live, and move, 
and have our being." The Trinity of man — body, soul 
and spirit — be-ing, acting; this is harmonious action, this 
is life. 



CHAPTER V. 
PRAYER. 

Thy zvill be done on earth, as it is in heaven. 

Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray and 
cry aloud; and He shall hear my voice. — Ps. 55 : 17. 

And as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance 
was altered, and His raiment was white and glister- 
ing. — S. Luke 9 : 29. 

And the very Son of peace sanctify you wholly; and I 
pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be pre- 
served blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. — I Thess. 5 : 23. 



64 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any sick 
among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and 
let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the 
name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the 
sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. . . . Confess 
your faults one to another, and pray one for another, 
that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of 
a righteous man availeth much. — S. James 5 : 13, 14, 
15, 16. 

In the present deification of the intellect there are 
many who are lowering the standard of prayer to the 
weak level of mere denials and affirmations. Any cheer- 
ful, hopeful state of mind, any kind thought for one's 
own or another's good (good as denned by the individual 
in his varying development), these are called prayer. 
"Holding a good thought" for one, the expression so 
often used, is placed in the category of prayer. These 
things have a value, but they are only steps to prayer. 
They are mental attitudes; they rarely touch or bring 
forth the deep and satisfactory resources of the soul. 
They are concerned with the circumference of man's 
being, and alone do not reach and awaken his center. 

Compared with the essence and true meaning of prayer 
as our Lord taught, and practiced it in Gethsemane and 
on Olivet, these things are a snare. They feed the mind 
on milk and sweetmeats, and cheat the soul of its true 
growth which it can get in no other way than on bended 
knees and in supplicating cries. 

Prophets and seers, saints and shining ones, cherubim 
and seraphim, fall down, worship and cry out. Fool- 
ish man, in his intellectual pride and vaunted growth, 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 65 

thinks he may do less. Every one will have his Geth- 
semane and Olivet, will stand alone with his God, and 
mere denials of discord and affirmations of harmony 
will then be found to have been a poor, weak, slender 
preparation and substitute for prayer in this fiery ordeal 
of the soul. 

We frequently come across derisive criticisms of the 
expression, "miserable sinners," used in the litany of the 
church. These youthful critics tell you that such ex- 
pressions hinder the spiritual growth of the worshiper. 
They overlook the preponderance of joy, praise and true 
prayer in the rest of the service, and they forget the two 
men in the Bible — one of whom boasted he was not as 
other men, calling themselves sinners; the other beat 
upon his breast, remembered his failings and weaknesses, 
and cried out for mercy for his sins. It was of the latter 
that our Lord said, "he went down justified." 

"For every one that exalteth himself shall be abased, 
and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." "If we 
say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the 
truth is not in us." Self-deception is not growth. In 
our enthusiasm and zeal to get knowledge and grow, we 
do not have to forget and let go the commands and prac- 
tices of our Lord. Whoever does this is taking his feet 
from the Rock and building on the sand. He will find 
himself swept out at sea when the torrents necessary 
for the true development of the soul come sweeping 
down upon him. 

Now that we have learned that the powers of the mind 
and the resources of the soul are at our command, it is 
time to rid ourselves of the idea that life is a flowery bed 
5 



66 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

of ease, that there is a rose-strewn path to glory, and 
that we can rest in the arms of the Absolute, while sin, 
suffering, ignorance and darkness are flourishing around 
us. There is a "rest that remaineth," but we enter it 
after toils and battles. 

The Lord's Prayer covers every need, human and 
divine. The first part deals with praise to God; the sec- 
ond with man's needs and — his sins. "Forgive us our 
sins, as we forgive sinners." The answer hinges on the 
humble acknowledgment of our sins, and the willingness 
and intention to forgive sinners. So long as there is a 
soul to be saved, just so long will we need supplicating 
prayers. 

"Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for 
we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but 
the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groan- 
ings that cannot be uttered." These groanings are for 
the sins of sinners. Who can read that awe- full prayer 
of our ascending Lord in S. John 17, and cheat himself 
into thinking that anything less than this full outpour- 
ing of being to a "Power not himself" can ever satisfy 
the needs and hunger of the developing soul. 

Among many mental practitioners "treatments," as 
they express their method, take the place of prayer. So 
far have they wandered from true prayer, that the domi- 
nant note in these "treatments" is "my will be done, not 
Thine." Nothing but excesses of every kind can follow 
in the wake of such mental states. 

A woman of irascible temper left her home for an in- 
definite visit. In a short time she wrote that she would 
return in a few days. Visiting in the home was a woman 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 6j 

who was taking her first lessons in "mental treatment." 
To preserve her own comfort she set to work to "treat" 
the old lady that she might not return. She declared 
her inability to return, and that she was in the best place 
for her. The old lady sent for her winter coat and pro- 
longed her stay. The student told her success (?) with 
gusto. Instead of being willing to use her knowledge 
to help the old lady into a sweeter temper, she set to work 
for her own selfish ease. 

Dean Marquis, of Detroit, tells of a congregation which 
prayed that a visiting evangelist might be kept a night 
longer amongst them, despite the fact that he was en- 
gaged elsewhere and anxious to go. A storm arose, the 
train was delayed, and they had one more intellectual 
feast. Their prayer had been answered. The next 
day's news informed them that hundreds of homes, 
lives, and much valuable property had been destroyed. 
In an article, the Dean asked them if they wished to take 
upon themselves the responsibility of the disaster. 

The extreme of this was touched upon by the Dean in 
a talk to the Emmanuel Movement Class in Boston. In 
his old way of talking to people distressed in mind or 
body, he used a common nostrum for all — "it was God's 
will," and so on. It would no longer do. He wanted 
something vital in his church, so he began with the study 
of the sphere and nature of prayer. He declared vehe- 
mently that there is a kind of prayer that is damning — a 
relinquishing, deadening prayer that threw everything 
into God's lap, rested on the bosom of Jesus, and left the 
suppliant an inert, inactive automaton. 



68 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

The king in Hamlet cried, "My words fly up, my 
thoughts remain below; words without thoughts never 
to heaven go." He said prayers, but did not pray. 
S. Paul tells us how — "Strive in prayers to God for me. 
I strive for you." A woman of India, who had become 
a Christian, prayed for a girl who had left her home ; she 
walked the roof all night, praying unceasingly. The girl 
returned the next day. She strove in prayer for her 
weaker sister. 

We do not change God's plan by this striving, nor do 
we need to wrest from Him some coveted boon. We are 
co-workers with Him. By ignorance and sin we have 
dissolved the partnership; we have strayed from His 
touch, and the effort in earnest prayer is to regain our 
position by His side. A woman who had heard a lec- 
turer declare that God's will would be done, came away 
feeling that a blow had been struck at prayer. Why 
should she pray? Why not just float along and let God 
do His will? Working with God, the human instru- 
mentality in the redemption of the world, had never oc- 
curred to her. 

The spirit of man wishes His will to be done, but the 
mind of man is divided between God and mammon. It 
is through the mind that man is a free agent, and can 
choose whom or what he will serve. The spirit is gently 
leading man to choose that quickening communion with 
God which is gained only in hours of prayer. Prayer 
begets and confirms that faith which constructs the 
bridge over which the gifts and power of God are con- 
veyed. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 69 

There is nothing that will weaken and demolish this 
structure more than to doubt God's willingness to grant 
a request. This is one of the secrets of the failure to 
heal the body, and yet if there is one thing of which we 
should be absolutely sure, without a scintilla of doubt, 
it is that God wants his co-workers with healthy, vigor- 
ous bodies. It is so in human partnerships; how much 
more so is it in the Divine relationship. 

There is a law, a rationale of prayer, that must be 
struck and maintained. The sinner stumbles sometimes 
upon this law, and gets the result, while the good man, 
with a wrong sense of humility, misses it. Our Lord 
did not lessen or withdraw his compassionate mercy as 
He went from town to town, yet He declares that He 
could not do many mighty works in some towns because 
of their unbelief. Those people believed something, but 
not the right thing in the right way. 

A noted clergyman says : "I would not and do not 
pray to be relieved of pain and sickness ; yet I pray 
for health and strength every day, and often go to the 
sick room to pray for their recovery." With a mind 
divided against itself, as seen in this acknowledgment, it 
is not strange that the people are not healed, and the 
healing gifts of our Lord are neglected and untaught. 

What is praying for recovery but the relief of pain 
and sickness? How much more comfortable is the boon 
of health and strength than that of healing. God as our 
Health is infinitely more, greater and nearer than God 
as our Healer. Assured of health and strength is to be 
totally and forever free from pain and sickness. Does 
he ask health and strength, doubting God's willingness 



jo The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

to bestow them? If he does not doubt the greater gift, 
why doubt the lesser? Thus does Satan deceive the 
very elect. Thus is built the strongest barrier against 
the revival of the gifts of healing left by our Lord to His 
Church. 

"Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree 
on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall 
be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For 
where two or three are gathered together in my name, 
there am I in the midst of them." Jesus knew the need 
of one mind to back and strengthen another. He knew 
that Satan would interpose with diagnoses of death and 
incurableness, and the need of impure and weakening 
disease to make pure and strong. Even He wanted this 
companionship in His hour of trial. His disciples were 
to watch and pray against the tempter. 

"Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 

"Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask 
bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, 
will he give him a serpent ? If ye then, being evil, know 
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much 
more shall your Father which is in heaven give good 
things to them that ask him? 

"And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, 
believing, ye shall receive. 

"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him 
that believeth. 

"What things soever ye desire, when, ye pray, believe 
that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. yi 

'Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that (not some- 
thing else) will I do, that the Father may be glorified in 
the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will 
do it. 

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask 
the Father in my name, he will give it you. 

"Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name ; ask and 
ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. 

"But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he 
that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the 
wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he 
shall receive anything of the Lord." 

Unless these promises are a mockery, it is our duty 
to lay hold upon them. The minds of Christians are 
sadly and frightfully befogged as to what is God's will, 
and what we should ask for. Our Lord made these 
promises to sinners. "If ye then, being evil, know how 
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more 
shall your Father give good things to them that ask 
him?" It is often said that if some things were given 
us, we would not use them aright, owing to our evil. 
Our Lord did not say this. He is willing to give all 
good gifts, and to stand by and help us to use them for 
His glory. Are the rich, helpful, and beautiful things of 
the world made only for the wicked? Shall only the 
"wicked flourish like a green bay tree"? 

Solomon's deflection is often held up as a paralyzing 
warning against asking for comforts of body as well as 
of soul, instead of a warning against using them wrongly. 
A woman who would not degrade ( ?) the use of prayer 
by asking for a pair of shoes for her bare feet, looked 



"J2 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

up to God as her supply, but took care to hold the shoes 
in the mental background. The Father wants us to be 
frank and definite. Mr. George Miiller is the best known 
example of asking God definitely for the smallest needs, 
and He never failed him. 

"Believers in the limitless power and measureless love 
of the Lord Jesus are catching a new vision of the will 
of God. 

"How enslaved to dark thought of His will have the 
children of the Most High been. The will of God has 
been a deep shadow on their pathway, obscuring the light 
of present blessing with its possible decrees of sorrow. 
It has been a skeleton in their closets, which they have 
prayed to stay behind closed doors. It has been a pres- 
ence from whose cold embrace they have pleaded to be 
released. 

"Their dread of His will has impelled them to school 
themselves to be ready for its visitation as for the pesti- 
lence that sweeps through the land. The will of God is 
associated with sick rooms, poverty, loss, bereavement, 
funerals, the open grave. The will of God, to such, is 
always dressed in black. And this conception of His 
will gives us sickly Christians, weak faith, empty joy, 
puny conquests." 

A young woman in Sunday School shuddered when 
the will of God was mentioned, and cried, "I am afraid 
to have His will done." 

Why do we not have more preaching and teaching 
about the Holy Ghost? That we might increase our 
faith and thus become perfect even as our Father is per- 
fect, God the Son withdrew from the flesh, but promised 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 73 

His Holy Spirit to men for health, happiness and guid- 
ance. Surely He did not mean that the Son should blot 
out the Holy Ghost. Why do we not open our inner 
ear to the "still, small voice" ? It is so possible for every 
follower of Jesus Christ to have a daily audience with 
the Holy Ghost. 

The land is flooded with human conventions and con- 
ferences. We are overwhelmed with human devices for 
man's relief from "plague, pestilence and famine." When 
shall we convene to listen to the conference of the Holy 
Spirit? It is in prayer that we give ourselves to Him, 
and He to us. We renew the body by renewing the 
mind; this renewing the mind is projecting its activity 
into a higher realm, and the law of the body is that it 
follows the mind. 

It is not unnatural, nor forcing the faculties into un- 
healthy channels. It is a transfiguration (the literal 
meaning of "renewing") here and now. It is changing 
the earthy mind into the "mind which was in Christ." 
It purifies and is a resurrection of the body. "As He 
prayed the fashion of His countenance was altered, and 
His raiment was white and glistering." The effect of 
prayer extended even to the garments. May not this be 
the meaning of S. Paul's act of sending aprons and hand- 
kerchiefs to heal the sick? 

Giving the whole man to God in prayer and receiving 
His spirit in return does not require great knowledge 
and learning. It is true worship which is simple. It is 
more than a merely intellectual belief. It is having a 
passion for God, and the highest things of God. The 
Psalms breathe a personal relation to and possession of 



74 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Him. The old Hebrews did not need death to unite 
them with God ; they had Him on earth, and that posses- 
sion was heaven and life; so much so that some writers 
thought that they did not believe in a future life. 

They sang what Jesus taught, and taught in the pres- 
ent tense: "Now are we passed from death unto life." 
"Now is salvation." "Be perfect, now." Our minds 
are dulled and spirits weighed down with the future 
tense. With no sense of shame we read, "Whom have 
I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that 
I desire beside thee," and there follows no desire to culti- 
vate a passion for God. 

"By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see 
death; and was not found, because God had translated 
him ; for before his translation he had this testimony, 
that he pleased God." He walked and talked with God, 
and in this close touch the body was purified unto trans- 
lation. Then there is a law for the transfiguration of 
our mortal bodies, and they do not have to enter God's 
presence through disease and decay. Why do we not 
teach and emphasize this? 

A clergyman sermonized on Enoch's life and trans- 
lation. He declared that all Christians should please 
God as Enoch did. To do this Enoch had to do and talk 
differently from others about him. After the sermon 
he was asked if it were possible for a Christian to walk 
with God as did Enoch. 

"O, yes." 

"Then it is possible for such a Christian to be trans- 
lated today?" 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 75 

He hesitated and shook his head. He was asked why 
so many ministers either turned down or shunned one 
in the church if he really tried to do as he had just 
preached. In the most lifeless and uninterested tone, 
he slowly said that he supposed that they thought such 
people cranks, and did not want to encourage those who 
made themselves so different from others, as they must 
do to let others know that they had something. 

"Quench not the Spirit." Who stops to realize the 
meaning of this injunction? 

A lecturer's text was, "Depart from me, for I am a 
sinful man." It was S. Peter's cry, when at our Lord's 
bidding he cast the net and received it full, despite the 
fact that Peter was a "sinful man." It was stated that 
we are no better today than Peter was, and that he 
needed the miracle to help him to see his sinfulness ; 
that there must come a time when sin must stop. On 
being asked if sin must stop, then must not death stop? 
the speaker hesitated, and expressed his thought that it 
was the soul that sinned and died. When it was made 
clear that the body is but the channel of sin, and mani- 
fests the state of the soul, he unequivocably said, "Yes, 
death must stop." 

"But without faith it is impossible to please him: for 
he that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and that 
he is (not will be) a rewarder of them that diligently 
seek him." The Bible urges us on by rewards. The 
general teaching is full of injunctions to do good, but 
O, the mistiness in claiming the reward here and now. 

It is so much like the bundle of hay on the shaft that 
urged the weary, struggling team to greater effort — the 
hay always remained at the end of the shaft. 



j6 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Only in ceaseless and devout prayer is fed and con- 
firmed that faith which "believeth all things" for body 
and soul. But prayer in work, prayer on the street can 
never take the place of that communion in the closet, 
which shuts out the world, and brings us into that vital 
touch of the Holy Spirit, whereby the Divine life rules 
body and soul. 

"There is a day coming when in our future and glori- 
fied life, these bodies shall be able to pass from world to 
world as quickly as thought can pass now; and when 
that day comes, it will simply be a higher plane of living 
and being. But we are constantly entering upon the 
higher even here, and anticipating and overlapping it. 
All that is necessary, therefore, is that we rise to the 
higher life, and we shall find its laws lifting us above 
the restraints of the lower. The real secret of divine 
healing is to reach out to the divine life and become 
united to the Living One. Then His supernatural life 
will fill not only our spiritual, but our physical nature, so 
that we shall find that the law of life in Christ Jesus 
hath made us free from the law of sin and death." 

"And when they were come up out of the water, the 
Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch 
saw him no more; and he went on his way rejoicing. 
But Philip was found at Azotus." The law of the higher 
life lifted Philip's body above the restraints of the lower, 
which was not violated, but superseded. It was not 
strange to Philip; he had probably had many such ex- 
periences. S. Paul tells us of his being "caught up to 
the third heaven. How that he was caught up into para- 
dise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not law- 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. JJ 

ful for a man to utter. Of such an one will I glory." 
His faith and energy were increased by these experiences, 
which may be that of every truly believing Christian. 
There is a timidity about these things which is repre- 
hensible. 

"Prayer is not our compelling God's reluctance, but 
laying hold of God's willingness." The "laying hold" 
is our share in the results. "Real prayer is to the soul 
like breathing to the body. It is the conscious drawing 
in of soul energy from its source, increasing the quantity 
and improving the quality of our entire conscious being." 
The cells, tissues and organs are revived and invigorated 
with the water of life more abundant. "Prayer is an 
instrumentality for bringing the mind into an effective 
state of conviction, concentration and receptivity to the 
divine influx that lifts the body above pain, and frees the 
flesh of dis-ease. There is a subtle interaction between 
the body and the soul." The soul's truest and most 
abiding uplift takes place in prayer. The soul's uplift 
is the body's, through mind. "Transform your body by 
the renewing of the mind," and this is done in devout, 
supplicatory prayer. Supplication is the central idea in 
all the words translated "prayer." 

An English writer tells of a lady whose illness "defied 
the doctor's best efforts. Do what he would, this patient 
got no better, till one day a very powerful prayer was 
made at her bedside, when she exclaimed, 'I am better !' 
and astonished all by dressing and coming down to the 
drawing-room, and mixing with other members of the 
family. Her friends considered that a 'miracle of 
prayer' had been wrought." "Miracles are not contrary 

/ 



78 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

to nature ; they are only contrary to what we know about 
nature." 

"Healing has long been regarded as a miracle, and 
because so considered many have felt it to be beyond a 
general experience. But those who are taught of God 
are persuading us that this life of divine manifestation 
in the body of the believer is a normal order. We simply 
take our stand on higher ground than the natural posi- 
tion. We believe that our God is life, and as our need 
of life is greater than the supply which we have in na- 
ture, we may take of His life because He has bidden 
us to." 

The universe is fashioned with reference to prayer, 
and in no direction are we blocked by the fixedness of 
nature's course. Water and air obeyed, "Peace, be 
still !" Gravitation gave way to the higher law of levita- 
tion when Peter's soul went forth and talked with his 
Lord — he and his body walked upon the waves. When 
he allowed the howling winds to drown his Lord's voice, 
his body sank under the law of gravitation. 

However beautiful any ritual may be, it can never do 
for us what is done in secret talks and daily personal 
audience with the Holy Ghost. "Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God." It is not merely a beautiful utter- 
ance, but an eternal, unchanging law that the Psalmist 
enunciates when he tells us to pray to and praise God 
early in the morning and in the night season. Our Lord 
went forth in the early hours and prayed for spiritual 
food. In the evening He renewed the supply, and built 
up the waste places in mind and body which the day's 
labor had wrought. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 79 

We are no better than the lower animals, if we go 
through this world subsisting alone on animal foods. 
The soul will never cease its cry for its own nourish- 
ment — this is its law, to be about its Father's business ; 
this cry, neglected and unsatisfied, is wrecking men, 
women and children, and is bringing about "every sick- 
ness and every plague which is not written in the book 
of this law." — Deuteronomy xxviii: 61. The causes of 
disease will forever elude until the whole man is fed. 

There is no "cannot" in the Christian's vocabulary; 
everything is implied in the expression, "If we will." 
The mad rush for the things of the outward senses de- 
mands strenuous and persistent effort to drill children 
into the reality and nearness of the spiritual world. The 
Lord "perceived" the "virtue" that went forth and en- 
tered the bodies of sufferers. With His mind we can 
make the things of spirit as real to us as the objects of 
sense. O, for a revival of the Hebrews' belief in the 
immanence of God which was a protective power to close 
the mouth of lions. "And no manner of hurt was found 
upon Daniel, because he believed in God." The warmth 
of His love can be such a reality, here and now, as to 
supersede the heat of fire and flames, as did the presence 
of that fourth and Holy One in the fiery furnace. 

A woman picked up a hot pan, which burnt the entire 
inside of the hand. She had only a short time left to 
finish her baking; something must be done at once, for 
the pain was severe and increasing, and she could not 
apply any outward remedy. Sitting down, and holding 
up her hand, she said, "Father, into thy Hand I commit 
my hand." To keep it there she recalled, "When thou 



80 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned : neither 
shall the flame kindle upon thee." "We went through 
fire and water, but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy 
place." Then she fed her hand upon the unwavering 
confidence that something had passed upon it. Her soul 
"perceived" that the Lord's "virtue" had touched and 
healed. It was more real than any outward application 
could be. The Creator is greater than things created. 
When the baking was finished all suffering had ceased, 
and the signs of the burn rapidly vanished. Knowing 
and doing heal and save. 

Zacharias and John did not leave the earth to behold 
angels and have visions of glory. Elisha prayed, and 
the eyes of the young man were opened to behold the 
mountain full of horses and chariots. Prayer opens the 
actual, physical eyes, and it does it by first bringing the 
inner eyes of the soul to behold the Source of all sights. 
The spiritual first, and the manifestation follows. "The 
Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every 
plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every 
herb of the field before it grew" To create in this way 
is the purpose and province of prayer. 

Angels, as men, appeared to Abraham, Lot, Jacob and 
Moses. These proclaim the nearness and presence of 
the spiritual world. He who prays should see and hear 
what the prayerless man cannot. It is the Christian's 
covenant and pledge. So long as students are taught 
that the days of signs and wonders are over, that every- 
thing must be in the heart, and no outward manifesta- 
tion, just so long will God and life be distant, and disease 
and death immanent and imminent. Sight and growth 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 81 

are one. A wicked and adulterous generation may have 
no sights and signs, but "these signs shall follow" those 
who have truly grown in grace. 

Ps. xci is a prayer that inviolably protects, and subju- 
gates all that afflicts and distresses inwardly and out- 
wardly. A lad prayed for his brother in battle. Over 
and over he repeated, "a thousand shall fall at thy side, 
and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come 
nigh thee," until something (or Someone ?) told him his 
brother would not be hit. When the brother returned 
and was told of it, he exclaimed: "I believe that. The 
bullets were flying thick around me that day, when all at 
once I felt a consciousness that I was protected. All 
my fear passed away, and I went through the battle like 
one with a charmed life." 

. "Except ye become as a little child." "Bear ye one 
another's burdens." 

A child of three years, daily taught God's love and 
nearness, cut his finger. Not in the least alarmed at the 
sight of blood, he went to his mother and said : "Mamma, 
Wash my finner, and put a rag on it. Dod will fitz it" 
(God will fix it). The next day, on contemplating the 
healed finger, free from soreness, he said: "I bleve I'll 
tut my finner aden, jus to see Dod fitz it." At that early 
age he had learned to see God in his flesh, healing and 
making whole, and the sight was fascinating and ab- 
sorbing. 

The sword that pierced through Mary's soul at the 

crucifixion of the Son, also pierces the soul of those to 

whom the spiritual is more real and dependable than the 

material, when they hear the light laugh and the denial 

6 



82 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

of the power of prayer of those who have been reared 
in the church. The Lord is crucified anew. He has not 
wholly come to such; they are still looking for another. 
They have never tasted the fruit of His resurrection. 

It is not difficult to find young men and women, who 
will open their eyes in astonishment and smile dubiously 
when prayer is spoken of as a healing power. 

A young man, to whom a lady told her instantaneous 
healing when anointed with oil and prayed for, shook 
his head slowly, and with a meaningless smile said: "I 
should want something more than that." Something 
more than God, all-mighty f 

Two young women, members of the church, on being 
told that a companion's accident was a case of man pro- 
posing and God disposing, that the violation of the fifth 
commandment had been punished by God, not arbitrarily, 
but in the relations of cause and effect, tossed their heads 
and exclaimed together : "Do you think God is interested 
enough in her to take notice of such a small thing as 
that? I do not believe any such thing." And yet, "not 
a sparrow falleth, but our Lord doth know." 

The Via Dolorosa is paved with these stones. After 
teaching the lessons of the healing miracles of our Lord, 
a Sunday School teacher remarked that, as the result of 
these lessons, which she had not emphasized in regard to 
the body (but our Lord did), one lad had so interpreted 
them for himself. An injured knee, which caused his 
parents anxiety, was taken to Jesus, as the lessons taught. 
He claimed the promise, arose from his couch, leaped 
with joy and declared his knee well. . Another teacher 
inquired: "But was it well? I'm afraid that's a danger- 
ous thing !" It is safe to teach about our Lord's healing 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 83 

work and power, but a dangerous thing to put it into 
practice. 

A devout and believing priest, who lived to be nearly 
one hundred years of age, passed through several severe 
illnesses with the aid of prayer alone. A drop of medi- 
cine had never passed his lips or been used on his body. 
He taught his people that the healing of Jesus is still 
available, awaiting their faith. 

At the last Conference of the Emmanuel Society in 
England, in an address on "Prayer as a Factor in Heal- 
ing," Lord Radstock said: "I want to call your attention 
to one passage in S. Matthew, 'Again I say unto you 
that if two of you shall agree upon earth as to what ye 
shall ask, it shall be done of my Father' — there must 
first be union; we must be gathered together in His 
name. This brings identification with Christ, which 
means power. Healing comes when the spiritual lesson 
is learned. The victory is all in His name. For myself, 
no doctor has for forty years been asked for help for 
me or for my children. One child was cured instanta- 
neously of spinal curvature, the child calling out, *J esus 
has done it !' and the next day that child could walk four 
miles." 

A man met a newsboy; the little fellow was crying. 
Said the man, "Whenever you are discouraged and find 
things going wrong, don't cry, but send a telegram to 
God for help." 

A few weeks later the boy rushed up to the man and 
said, "Say, Mister, I've been trying the sky telegram, 
and I've sold more papers since I've been doing that than 
I ever did before." This little street Arab had learned, 



84 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

probably for the first time, something of the nearness 
and reality of unseen Helpers. 

It is the Christian's privilege to telegraph and tele- 
phone, with souls as transmitter and recipient, but since 
Christians have not believed, have not taken God at His 
word, the Father, longing to pour forth the riches of 
His grace, has had to use the material scientist, who gets 
at us in a roundabout way with mechanical devices at the 
ends of the battery. A very few are proving these 
things, but they are so scoffed that the road to success is 
made long and rough. 

We do not pray often and honestly enough. Prayer 
becomes perfunctory; we rise from prayer as from a 
duty, instead of a privilege. We come from our closets 
still hungering for the "peace that passeth understand- 
ing," still looking for the "light that never shone on land 
or sea." 

The telegraph and telephone are more real to us than 
God's voice and answer. We go into telegraph and tele- 
phone offices, send messages, and come out satisfied. We 
go to prayer, and come away wondering if anything was 
really done, despite the most definite and unlimited prom- 
ises of God. Our first and most sufficient ground of 
certainty is His promises. "Believe Me for the very 
works' sake." 

There is no promise for listless, perfunctory prayers. 
The body is composed of chemicals which are at the 
mercy of emotions. Envy, hatred and malice poison the 
fluids of the body. Helpful, constructive and abiding 
emotions are accumulated and stored up in the sacred 
moments devoted to prayer; the faith which is thus fed 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 85 

becomes a dynamic within man, and sets in motion the 
highest laws of his three-fold being. 

As S. Paul met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, 
so has He been met several times on the streets of a city 
by a young woman who has given up prayer because she 
never seemed to get any answers. He always looks sad, 
and never passes her by, but vanishes just before reach- 
ing her. He will never pass her by, and some day she 
will return to her Father's abode. 

A teacher of metaphysics frequently interlarded the 
instructions with her own experiences in talking with 
God and the commissions she received in return. One 
day a student could keep silent no longer, and in perplex- 
ity exclaimed: "You surprise me, to hear you talk of 
such a personal intercourse with God. I never heard 
anything like it. I do not understand." 

The teacher sadly replied : "The surprise should be on 
my part; that you, born and reared in the church, par- 
taking of its Communion for nearly half a century, 
should never have had the joy of making God's voice real 
to you. Your earthly father is loved because you talk 
with him. How can you expect ever to love the 
Heavenly Father, with whom intercourse is not so real 
as with the earthly father? Your belief is mainly in- 
tellectual, and is not the knowledge that gives eternal life. 
To know Him you must walk with Him, talk with Him. 
You cannot wait to take time for this intercourse ; you 
must make the time." 

Bishop Creighton declares that the only real thing we 
can do for another is to pray for him. No one is the 
same after prayer has been made for him. The editor 
of "The Healer" says of prayer for the dead: "No diffi- 



86 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

culty presents itself to my mind, if we remember that 
here on earth we are spirits with a material bodily cover- 
ing, and that when we pass over we are still spirits — 
only without a material bodily covering. The same life, 
the Breath of God, sustains us in both places. When we 
pray for our loved ones, when still in the flesh, our prayer 
is chiefly that they themselves, their spirit, may be drawn 
nearer to God. Why should that prayer cease because 
they have thrown off the material bodily covering? We 
still long that they may be helped onward and upward, 
and that more light and strength may be given them, 
and what can we do but take this intense longing to our 
Father. 

"We are not able to understand how our intercession 
for others during their earth-life is allowed to be a means 
of blessing, but we know that God does use it, and surely 
it is a materialistic tendency which prevents the contin- 
uance of our prayers, because they have left this veil of 
flesh. Prayers for the progress of the Departed abound 
in the early liturgies of the church, and especially in 
connection with the celebration of the Holy Communion, 
where spirit with spirit can meet. It would be well if we 
need not use the word 'dead/ for 'our God is not the God 
of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him/ ,; 

The Lambeth Conference Report (1908) has this in- 
structive passage: "The committee believes that Christ 
still fulfills in Christian experience His power to give 
life, and to give it more abundantly, and that the faith 
which realizes His presence, is capable of creating a 
heightened vitality of spirit, which strengthens and sus- 
tains the health of the body. The committee believes 
that sickness and disease are in one aspect a breach in 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 87 

the harmony of the Divine purpose, not only analagous 
to, but sometimes at least caused by, want of moral har- 
mony of Divine Will, and that this restoration of har- 
mony in mind and will often brings with it the restora- 
tion of the harmony of the body. It believes that sick- 
ness has too often exclusively been regarded as a cross 
to be borne with passive resignation, whereas it should 
have been regarded rather as a weakness to be overcome 
by the power of the Spirit. The committee believes that 
potency of corporate intercession has been too little real- 
ized, and that the confidence in the efficacy of prayer for 
the restoration to health has not been sufficiently encour- 
aged. 

"The committee recommends the addition to the Office 
for the Visitation of the Sick of more hopeful and less 
ambiguous petitions for the restoration of health, than 
this Office at present supplies, and that these petitions be 
used in close connection with prayer for pardon and 
peace. And these prayers may be fitly accompanied by 
the apostolic act of the laying-on of hands." 

"More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer , 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend? 
For so the whole round world is every way 
Bound by golden chains about the feet of God." 

"Who prays not, exists, but he lives not, 
A blot and a discord is he." 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE HUNGER FOR BODILY HEALING IS GOD- 
IMPLANTED. 

We groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, 
to wit, the redemption of our body. — Rom. 8: 23. 

For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of 
His bones. — Eph. 5 : 30. 

The body is for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. — 
I Cor. 6: 13. 

But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the 
dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead 
shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that 
dweileth in you. — Rom. 8: 11. 

For I am the Lord that healeth thee. — Ex. 15: 26. 

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy 
diseases. — Ps. 103: 3. 

The prayer of faith shall save the sick; . . . pray 
for one another, that ye may be healed. — Jas. 5:15, 16. 

The editor of "The Healer" says: "It is strange that 
one of unmistakable Christian principles should say, 
'we have passed beyond the days of S. James !' and, fur- 
ther, that the 'gift of healing' mentioned by S. Paul and 
S. James was of a transient nature, and not designed for 
perpetuity in the church! Once admit this, and where 
are we to draw the line as to what is transient and what 
is perpetual? Our Lord's injunction to the church was 
to 'preach the gospel and heal the sick.' Are we to obey 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 89 

the first and ignore the second? The ministry of the 
church must be identical with the ministry of her Lord 
and Master, which, according to the gospel narrative — 
and S. Peter's testimony — was the 'ministry of heal- 
ing' — the complete redemption of both body and soul." 

Rev. Kenneth Mackenzie declares : "Divine healing 
is just Divine life. It is the headship of Christ over the 
body. It is the life of Christ in the physical frame. It 
is the union of our members with the very Body of 
Christ, and the inflowing life of Christ in our living 
members." 

Ask the question, "What do you think of the healing 
of the body by the prayer of faith?" when and where you 
may, the answer will invariably be, "I believe it can be 
done, though much depends on the individual ; but of 
course the healing of the soul is the most important." 

This is the favorite answer of those who stand in pul- 
pits. When the command, "Preach and heal," is read, 
the first clause is received with both eyes wide open, but 
both eyes are closed to the "and heal." 

We are told that the healing is for sin of the soul, and 
not for the body, yet our Lord made no such distinction, 
and meant no such thing. When He opened eyes, it was 
physical eyes ; when He healed all sickness and all man- 
ner of diseases, He restored the body. His disciples 
interpreted Him thus and did the works that He did; 
likewise the Seventy whom He sent forth; and His 
words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth 
on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater 
works than these shall he do; because I go unto my 
Father," are a command to all Christians as well as a 



go The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

legacy. It is indeed true that the soul is first; that our 
Lord pronounced it such when He said, "Fear not them 
which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but 
rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and 
body in hell." But this did not prevent His healing the 
body by His word. It is possible to let the soul loom up 
so largely that it will shut out the benefit which should 
accrue to the body, except that which comes in an aim- 
less, general, indirect way; it is also equally possible to 
let the welfare of the body detract from the soul's 
growth. Extremes are always bad, but there is an ele- 
ment of truth in extremes which, if used aright, will 
bring about the happy medium. 

Those who, in their God-implanted hunger for physical 
healing, have left the church, and are following this and 
that "ism," will tell you that the church has neglected 
one-half of our Lord's command, is preaching but half 
the gospel to half the man, and has the divided garment. 
In reply the church declares, more truthfully and signifi- 
cantly, that the cults have the divided garment, and 
points to all the commands of our Lord — baptism with 
water, as His body was baptized, which rite He taught 
His disciples to observe, and the Communion of Bread 
and Wine, of which He partook, and also commanded 
His disciples to perpetuate, declaring it to be an eternal 
Sacrament. "But I say unto you," He said, "I will not 
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day 
when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." 
And again, "Teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 91 

/ have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway 
even unto the end of the world." 

Amongst these all things, baptism of the body and 
Communion of Bread and Wine were recognized by His 
disciples. It was only by strictly observing ( 'all things 
whatsoever I have commanded" that the early church 
healed the sick, cast out devils and raised the dead for 
six centuries after our Lord's ascension; which works, 
in sporadic cases, have continued down through the cen- 
turies. In the Dark Ages, when the church was steeped 
in materialism, the angels of His Presence sheltered and 
preserved the rush-light of the faithful healers; but to- 
day the Holy Spirit is fanning into new life the healing 
gifts of both body and soul. 

Our Lord's full redemptive work must include the 
body, as testified by S. Paul: "Because the creature itself 
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into 
the glorious liberty of the children of God; . . . 
even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for 
the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." Our 
Lord came to give life, and give it more abundantly, 
declaring to Mary and Martha, that if they would truly 
believe (receive, literally) "that He was the resurrection 
and the life," that even on this earth the life should re- 
turn to the body of Lazarus. He does not want us to 
die, but live, as shown in the restoration from the grave 
of the bodies of the little maid, the widow's son, of Laza- 
rus, and of those who were raised from the dead by His 
disciples. The Early Fathers tell us that the whole 
church fasted and prayed for one who had died, but 
could not be spared, and he was restored. S. Peter also 



92 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

brought Dorcas to life, "a woman full of good works 
and alms-deeds," who was a necessity to their work. 

Our Lord is the Life, and He is with us. It is His 
boundless mercy and compassionate love that heal, and 
they have never been withdrawn. He, the Life, stands 
knocking at the door of the soul, but we hear Him not, 
and the attuned ear may still hear His cry, "O, Jeru- 
salem, Jerusalem, ye will not come to Me, that ye might 
have life." Those who are working for life here and 
now are hastening the Lord of Life's coming, and not 
those who are expecting death, and declaring diseases 
incurable when they have never been laid before our 
Lord in prayer. 

England thinks that America has accepted the healing 
more readily than herself. It may be that the younger 
brother, with the eagerness and impetuosity of youth, 
has indeed jumped head and heels into the midst of a 
mighty work; but he is beginning to realize the truth of 
the maxim that "haste makes waste," and is now consid- 
ering the necessity for cleaning up the dark corners that 
have accumulated about the healing work. Our elder 
brother will do wisely and well to profit by our impet- 
uosity and cling closely to all our Lord's commands, espe- 
cially seeing to it that the Stone that is the Incarnation, 
which many hasty builders have rejected, be made the 
corner-stone of all healing. 

The question is asked, "What is the difference between 
the healing in our church and that of the cults?" It is 
the difference between a man, Jesus, the best and wisest 
teacher, whose divinity did not differ from our own, 
save that He recognized and used His, and Jesus Christ, 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 93 

the Divine Humanity, Emmanuel, God with us, the 
Saviour of the world, from whom still comes the virtue 
to make the body whole. It is the difference between 
reducing the practices and teachings of our Lord to ab- 
stract principles, and practicing and maintaining them 
as commanded by Him and His disciples. It is the dif- 
ference between the Immaculate Conception of our Lord, 
and an immaculate conception voiced in some statement 
of an erring, human being. It is the difference between 
the resurrection of our Lord, believed and taught by His 
followers, and, as Irenseus says, "simply an acquaintance 
with that truth which they proclaim." To sum up, it is 
the difference between building a house on the sand, and 
building a house on the Rock. It is not denied that you 
can build a house on the sand, but its enduring qualities 
are vividly portrayed in the gospels. 

It is the day of the deification of the intellect, and 
those who have left the church are making the fatal mis- 
take of separating Jesus from Christ. To them, Jesus 
is a wise man who used the Christ principle for body 
and soul. Christ is an abstract principle, pervading all 
people and things, a power at their beck and call to bring 
showers of blessings when they affirm, and the opposite 
when they deny. 

An adherent of a cult, who sends forth books by the 
hundreds, tells readers to "just rise into the realm of 
I am, and by imagination and affirmation pump yourself 
full of — I am power, I am wisdom, I am love." And 
again, "quietly realize that the Infinite is really you." 

Far better that we go through this world with all the 
bodily sufferings which attack the flesh, than to separate 



94 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Jesus from Christ and accept such teaching as this. 
Such teachers would do well to remember our Lord's 
words: "When I come again shall I find the faith upon 
the earth?" The faith which has obeyed all His com- 
mands. 

Even the material scientist is quietly proving in his 
laboratory that symbols are more than symbols when 
they are laid before our Lord and weighted with prayer. 
Just as the needle, brought into contact with the magnet, 
becomes more than a needle — a needle plus — and is then 
empowered to draw other needles, so the bread and 
wine, laid before the altar and imbued with prayer, which 
is communion or contact with God, exalts the recipient 
body and soul, and being lifted up he is enabled to draw 
all men unto God. 

The teachers of the various cults will tell you that they 
can do all these things without the aid of the symbols 
which our Lord used and commanded His church to use. 
Even the church is not fully awake to the health-giving 
power of the Eucharist. It is the deepest, most sacred, 
most powerful form of prayer, when prayer is under- 
stood to mean contact with God. Rev. Percy Dearmer 
says: "S. Paul states clearly the effect of a sacrament 
upon bodily health. . . . He states definitely that 
the unworthy reception of the Holy Communion pro- 
duces a lowering of physical vitality. . . . We 
should expect this to happen, since spiritual things affect 
both the spirit and soul of man, and it is the hidden part 
of his soul, in the undermind, which controls the func- 
tions of the body. The effect of this lowering of a man's 
intrinsic vitality could not be better expressed — he be- 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 95 

comes 'weakly and sickly.' Apparently S. Paul means 
also to suggest that some have died because of this, 'not 
a few sleep/ A Sacrament, we may conclude, rightly 
received, raises the vitality and thus strengthens the 
body. It is a means of healing; and to this we bear wit- 
ness whenever our English form for the reception of 
Holy Communion is used — 'The Body of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and 
soul unto everlasting life.' " 

Our Lord promised to meet us at the Holy Commun- 
ion, and to bestow healing upon body and soul. But 
the communicants must know this in order to get the full 
benefit ; the teaching is not sufficiently definite on the 
subject. Ignorance is ranked as a sin, when we pray, 
"forgive us all our sins, negligences and ignorances." 
It makes the ignorant receive the Eucharist "unworth- 
ily," and come under condemnation. One cannot have 
faith in something of which he is ignorant, and so, com- 
ing without faith in bodily healing is again "unworthi- 
ness." Sick bodies are brought to the Communion, and 
sick bodies are taken away. The soul is strengthened 
to bear instead of encouraged to conquer. Expectation 
is one of the most powerful mental attitudes for healing, 
and the communicants should be taught to know why 
they should be healed in body. 

Malachi gives a striking arraignment of this state of 
things. "A son honoreth his father, and a servant his 
master: if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and 
if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of 
hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And 
ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name? 



g6 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

"Ye offer polluted bread upon my altar; and ye say, 
Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The 
table of the Lord is contemptible. 

"And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? 
and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it 
now unto thy governor: will he be pleased with thee, 
or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts. 

"But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of 
the Lord is polluted ; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, 
is contemptible. 

"Ye have also said, Behold, what a weariness is it! 
and ye have snuffed at it, saith the Lord of hosts : and ye 
brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the 
sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this 
of your hand? saith the Lord." 

The reception of the Eucharist is lacking in complete- 
ness and power when the communicant does not get the 
full benefit, for body as well as soul, and this S. Paul 
termed receiving "unworthily." What a great power 
for bodily healing the church has in the Eucharist. A 
noted physician declared that a patient, who, to his pro- 
fessional mind, was dying, was restored to life by his 
taking the Communion for him. A devout priest bears 
witness thus: "I marvel at the greatness and life-giving 
properties of the Holy Sacrament. An old woman who 
was spitting blood and who had lost all strength, being 
unable to eat anything, after the administration of the 
Holy Sacrament began to recover the same day from her 
illness." 

"A young girl who was almost dying, after the Com- 
munion of the Holy Sacrament began to revive the same 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 97 

day from her illness; began to eat, drink and speak; 
while before this she was almost in a state of uncon- 
sciousness, violently tossed about, and could neither eat 
nor drink anything. Glory to thy life-giving and terri- 
ble mysteries, O Lord." 

Canon Gardiner, at the Canterbury Diocesan Confer- 
ence, said: "I have said nothing of Unction, God's gift 
of healing; I have referred only to the laying on of 
hands with prayer as a means of grace. We clergy could 
do more, I think, to bring spiritual healing to our people. 
We can teach the power of prayer. We can do much to 
release the patient from doubts and fears and the burden 
of sin, by the ministry of reconciliation. We can, above 
all, bring home to our people the effect of the Holy Com- 
munion upon the body as well as the soul." 

At a recent conference the question was put in the 
question-box: "If our Lord commanded His followers 
to heal the sick, why is the church not obeying His com- 
mand?" The rector answered that the church was heal- 
ing in its preaching, and then went on to tell of very ill 
and dying people who had been healed by prayer and by 
the Communion. He told of brother rectors who had 
the same experiences, and then added, "but we rectors 
never talk about these things." 

But why do not rectors talk of these things? When 
all around the cults are flourishing on cures produced 
by suggestion, by the power of mind controlling matter, 
and such like cures, why do the rectors hold their peace 
at the true healing of our Lord? Shall the children of 
darkness be more wise in telling of their cures than the 
children of light? How long shall the Lord's light be 
7 



98 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

hid under a bushel, while we witness the steady leakage 
from our churches into cults that are leading people into 
darkness, after a man, Jesus, instead of our Lord Jesus 
Christ? The church is responsible for this confusion. 

The hunger for bodily healing is God-implanted, and 
there is no hunger of the people the church cannot meet. 
Before the altar the priests stand and dispense its gifts 
to the soul, while behind the altar the talent of healing 
lies, unused, accumulating no interest. The church 
may go on for centuries arraigning the cults and their 
evils, and with little results. If she would combat all 
this evil teaching, she must preach all the gospel to all 
the man, healing the body as well as the soul, for the 
devil knew what he was talking about when he said of 
Job, "All that a man hath will he give for his life." As 
a noted divine writes : "If the church, closing her eyes to 
the example of her Lord and deaf to His commands, 
withholds from the people the gifts committed to her by 
Jesus, she must expect to find herself forsaken for 
strange cults which, with all their absurdities, aim at 
supplying present strength for present needs/' 

One thing is undoubtedly standing in the way of the 
church's beginning the healing, and that is the thought 
that it must be begun and carried on by skilled workers, 
trained in psychology, suggestion, and such things. The 
Bible gives no warrant for any such view. Psychology 
and its branches are very well in their place, but they 
are but drops in the bucket compared to the power of 
men and women which can be found in all churches, 
whose souls pant for God as the hart paneth for the 
water brooks; men and women who have a passion for 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 99 

God, and who know that prayer is the power that can 
rule the world, and that the "practice of the presence of 
God" is the only requisite for healing of body and soul. 
Had the late Convention in Cincinnati heard the heart- 
throbs and prayers of its people hungering for spiritual 
healing, and also heard the clamor of the powers of evil 
leagued together to prevent the healing, the members 
could never have returned to their homes and churches 
with an easy conscience. God help the wee and weak 
lambs that may stray far from the fold ere the next Con- 
vention meets. 



CHAPTER VII. 
TESTIMONIALS. 

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy 
diseases. — Ps. 103 : 3. 

Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? 
why then is not the health of the daughter of my people 
recovered? — Jer. 8: 22. 

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is thy refuge, 
even the Most High, thy habitation, 

There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague 
come nigh thy dwelling (body — R. V.). — Ps. 91: 10, 11. 

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not 
have you ignorant. — I Cor. 12: I. 

There is a woeful ignorance concerning these spiritual 
gifts, about which S. Paul was anxious that all should 
understand. There is something worse than ignorance, 



ioo The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

there is an actual scoffing. S, Paul thus enumerates 
them: "There are different ways of serving the Master, 
but the Master is the same: spiritual illumination is in 
each instance given for some good purpose. While the 
power to speak wisely is given to one man by the means 
of the Spirit, the gift to another is the power to speak 
with knowledge; to another faith is given through the 
same Spirit; to another ability to cure diseases through 
the one Spirit ; to another miraculous powers ; to another 
the prophetic gift; to another the gift of distinguishing 
between true and false inspiration; to another varieties 
of the gift of tongues, and to another the power to ex- 
plain them." — Twentieth Century New Testament. 

When, with the laying on of hands, which has always 
conferred something more and special, it is prayed that 
the Holy Spirit "may increase His manifold gifts of 
grace," why do we not expect to find amongst us some 
of these spiritual gifts so clearly defined by S. Paul? 
When one is found, what is the general attitude? 

How many supplicants know what they are saying 
when they pray, "pour out upon them the seven-fold 
gifts of Thy Holy Spirit"? How much longer shall 
these things be the mere "letter that killeth"? 

A young man mashed his hand and shattered his fore- 
arm. Several surgeons were called in, and without ex- 
ception declared it impossible to set the arm; it must be 
cut off. Turning to his mother, the young man cried: 
"Mother, I'd rather die now than go through life with 
one arm." With prayer in heart and voice she replied: 
"Your arm shall be saved." One surgeon was willing 
to do the best he could, and the arm was set. Hourly 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 101 

the mother strove in prayer. Hand and arm were saved 
perfectly whole and sound. "As many as touched were 
made perfectly whole." 

The issues of life are alone in God's hand, not in any 
man's. Our Lord healed thousands called incurable by 
the ignorant, and instead of dooming to death He de- 
clared "all things are possible to those who believe and 
come to Me for life." We can believe what we will 
believe. We can see and hear what we will see and 
hear. It is time to stop saying "incurable." No man 
has the right or knowledge to condemn any case to in- 
curableness or death. An eminent physician and surgeon 
declared that he had seen such marvelous recoveries that 
he always lived in hope of life in every case. Dr. Loren 
Batten, of S. Mark's, New York, says that "there is 
scarcely such a thing known as a uniformly fatal disease. 
A few escape." 

A boil on a lad's leg turned into a running sore, which 
continued thus for years. Pieces of bone were removed 
again and again. It was pronounced incurable, and the 
lad would never reach manhood. He was made a sub- 
ject of prayer, the leg was completely healed, and he is 
now the father of two children. 

A similar case was that of a woman of sixty years. 
No bone had ever been removed, but she had been dis- 
abled for nearly ten years. This, too, was perfectly 
healed by prayer. 

A woman from early childhood had been a sufferer 
from head colds, which, descending to the throat, caused 
loss of voice for many days. With hourly use of internal 
and external remedies, the trouble was never relieved 



102 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

under six or eight weeks. When she learned that such 
"attacks" were "messengers of Satan to buffet," she 
arose to the situation with righteous indignation at the 
first sign, and the "young lion and dragon were put 
under foot" in three days, and sometimes instantly routed. 

A woman was ofttimes seized with abdominal cramps, 
which would finally yield after many hours of heroic 
treatment. One day, when attacked, there was with her 
a friend who had learned and experienced God's healing 
for the body. They talked on the subject, and in fifteen 
minutes she was totally healed. She has never had a 
recurrence in eighteen years. 

"And Simon's wife's mother was taken (seized) with 
a great fever ; and they besought Him for her. And He 
stood over her and rebuked the fever; and it left her: 
and immediately she arose, and ministered unto them." 

Do we rebuke fevers today? Why not? We cannot 
believe that the Master was joking, or perpetuating igno- 
rance and darkness. He came to bring, in word and 
deed, knowledge and light. It is S. Luke only, the 
physician, who tells of this healing as the result of a 
rebuke. Personality is involved in a rebuke, not condi- 
tions and things. Rev. John Naylor, in the Hibbert 
Journal, gives some light on this case. 

He says: "It is striking the extent to which S. Luke 
carries the idea of demoniac influence. In common with 
S. Matthew, he regards dumbness as due to it. The 
word used means bad demon, or evil spirit. How came 
S. Luke to make such frequent use of this term if he 
did not believe in demons as causes of diseases, for in 
nearly all cases they are connected by him with disease. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 103 

Many examples place it beyond doubt that S. Luke was a 
convinced believer in the causation of many physical and 
psychical disorders by evil spirits, and that he regarded 
such spirits as ministers in a realm of evil whose ruler 
was Satan. 

"He would probably have agreed with Philo in hold- 
ing that 'the air is full of corporeal beings/ and with the 
disciples in holding that when Christ rebuked the winds 
He did so because these beings in the guise of stormy 
gusts were bent on the wreck of the boat. That both 
Jesus and Christians believed in demons is patent. S. 
Paul had no doubts about them. The powers of the air 
were intensely real to him, as were the bufferings of 
Satan. In the Christian churches the same belief pre- 
vailed. Christ Himself neither said nor did anything 
to reduce or remove that belief. The Master did accept 
it. He never doubted it. A Presbyterian missionary, 
Doctor Nevins, said that when he went to China he at 
first despised and condemned the prevalent belief in de- 
moniac possession, but after the lapse of years he ac- 
cepted it." 

A little girl of eight years was "seized with a fever." 
The Sunday School teacher, believing in prayer, took her 
home to nurse, thus relieving the mother who had other 
little ones to care for. As she lay on the bed in a partial 
stupor, the teacher prayed for light, which was given 
her by the Holy Spirit. Turning to the child, she in- 
quired what was bothering her. With an effort, the 

child drowsily asked: "Mrs. , are we born under a 

star?" 

The child was a deep thinker, and mused much alone. 



104 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Instantly it occurred to the teacher that she had heard 
some perplexing jargon about ill fates under certain 
stars, and this psychic fever was the result. She shook 
her shoulder gently to arouse her, and firmly said: 
"Elizabeth, you are born under God. You are His high- 
est creation, and everything else is under you. You have 
nothing to fear. Now turn over, go to sleep, and wake 
up well." The fever instantly began to diminish and 
disappear. The next morning the child was sound and 
well, and she went home to "minister unto" her mother. 

A lad came from school one Friday in a listless mood. 
All day Saturday he tried to be interested in his work 
and play, but when night came he said to his mother: "I 
would like to sleep with you tonight." That was the sig- 
nal that he had done his best to work out his own salva- 
tion, but now felt the need of help. The mother went 
early to bed with him, talked long and earnestly of God's 
love and care, His nearness and willingness to stretch 
forth His hand that is not shortened that it cannot save, 
promised to awake and pray for him while he slept, and 
as he went off to sleep repeated with him the Lord's 
Prayer. When she awoke the next morning, glancing at 
his breast, she saw it lightly marked with measles. She 
explained the nature of the battle he was to wage, add- 
ing, "As it is raining today, you need not drive in with 
us to the city to church. I shall leave you at home to do 
your work. Alone with God, while I pray with you be- 
fore the altar, you can conquer this day, and tomorrow 
be ready for school." 

At her request he made a successful effort to be pres- 
ent at every meal and to eat a fair portion for conscience 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 105 

sake. The eruption never spread, and on Monday morn- 
ing every vestige had disappeared from the body; he 
ate breakfast with relish, went to school, and had not 
another day of discomfort. . 

Herein was proved the truth of Sir John Forbes' state- 
ment, that "means acting directly on the mind are fully 
as powerful and effective in disease of a purely bodily 
character as in mental disease," and also that of Dr. Paul 
Dubois : "The battle against all this is one of moral re- 
sistance, and not of physical health." 

A young negro woman, employed by a lady who had 
known her from childhood, and in whom the girl had 
implicit trust, failing to do her work with the usual alac- 
rity, was questioned as to the cause, and explained that 
for three or four months she had been bothered with a 
female trouble which was now telling on her and giving 
alarm, as friends had declared it would kill her. Having 
no money for a doctor, and being afraid of examination 
and operation, she had borne it alone until now she was 
ready to give up. 

The lady took her Bible and read of the woman who 
touched the hem of Christ's garment and was instantly 
healed. In a positive tone she said: "Mary, you need 
not fear. You will live. Believe, and you, too, can 
touch the hem of His garment and be healed." Spiritual 
instruction and assurance were given freely and firmly. 
The Lord's Prayer was repeated together (that His will 
might be done on earth as in heaven, where there is no 
fear, no pain, no death), and the girl went about her 
duties. The next day was Friday ; not a word was asked 
about how the girl felt ("what things soever ye desire, 



106 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall 
have them") but the simple inquiry: "Mary, would you 
like me to say the Lord's Prayer with you today?" 

Again they repeated the prayer together, and assur- 
ance was renewed. The next day being a busy one for 
Sabbath preparation, the inquiry was forgotten. When 
the girl returned on Monday the lady remarked: "Mary, 
I was so busy Saturday that I forgot to ask if you wished 
the Lord's Prayer said with you." 

The girl replied exultingly : "Why, I was healed Thurs- 
day. It was just like the woman in the Bible." After 
that she was frequently healed instantly. 

This young woman had been told to stop talking aches 
and pains, to refuse to name diseases, and that it was all 
a battle with Satan. Failing to come to do her weekly 
housecleaning, some days after she strolled slowly up to 
the house, and as the lady appeared she dragged out: 

"I come to tell you I didn't come." 

"Well, Mary, why didn't you come?" 

"I been a fighting." 

"What have you been fighting?" 

"Why, you know — that thing that's going all around 
the country. All my folks had it, and I been' a nursing 
them. They kept a saying I'd get it, and I said I 
wouldn't, but when I woke Thursday I found it had me. 
I made up my mind I'd fight it. I would not lie down, 
for some of them would come in and find me. So I 
sent my husband off fishing, scraped up all the clothes 
in the house, washed and ironed them, and did not go to 
bed till my usual hour. The next day I had to fight 
again, so I went into the woods and walked up and down 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 107 

all day. This morning I had conquered, but I was too 
weak to come to work." 

The lady was deeply interested, and said : "Mary, I am 
proud of you, and I know God is, too. Your victory 
will help me to victory; but I am truly curious to know 
what you have fought so valiantly." 

"Now, you-you-you know" (she stuttered sometimes), 
"it was th-th-th-s-s-satchel." 

Not even for her benefactress would she say "Grippe." 

"Put on all the armor of God, so that you may be able 
to stand your ground against the stratagem of the devil. 
For our struggle is not against the enemies of flesh and 
blood, but against the powers of evil, against those that 
hold sway in the darkness around us, and against the 
spirits of wickedness on high. Therefore take all the 
armor of God, in order that when the evil day comes, 
you may be able to withstand the attack, and having 
carried the struggle through, still to stand your ground." 
— Twentieth Century New Testament. 

To see an uneducated, undeveloped negro girl, with 
her so-called friends arrayed against her, "carry the 
struggle through and still stand her ground," is a sting- 
ing rebuke to those who lightly say, "It sounds all right, 
but I cannot do it." They will not do it. But some 
time, in some place, whether in their physical body or 
out, the struggle will have to be made. Every weakness 
will have to be trans formed into strength. They will 
have to prove that "they can do all things through Christ 
that strengtheneth them." The "second death" will give 
them a chance to prove that not through disease and 
decay does man reach God, but through transfiguration, 
the renewing of the mind, seeing things as God sees them. 



108 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

A woman with Bright's disease had been pronounced 
incurable by several doctors. In agony she went for 
help to the last doctor, who had grown tired of the case. 
He told her nothing more could be done; that any rem- 
edy would but temporarily relieve, and that it was a 
matter o'f but a few months of life. She left his office 
with a bottle and prescription. She had three children 
to live for. In despair she stood on a corner and prayed 
for help and guidance. There came into her mind that 
a few blocks away was a woman who believed in the 
healing "virtue" of the Lord. She called upon her. 
For more than two hours they read the Bible, talked and 
prayed. The healing began then and there. The bottle 
and prescription were thrown away. That was nearly 
eighteen years ago, and she is alive and active today. 

A young woman was taken with typhoid fever; like 
her mother, she could not take internal remedies, but 
was nursed and nourished hourly by a mother who be- 
lieved in the power of prayer which had healed her after 
man and drugs had failed. At the end of three weeks 
the mother asked a friend, who lived in the country, to 
join her in prayer. One Saturday morning, as this friend 
was in the midst of housecleaning, there surged into her 
mind a need for special prayer for the girl. She sat 
down. The room faded from her sight. In the air be- 
fore her there arose a cloud of glistening white, which, 
parting, disclosed an arched bridge over which a funeral 
procession was passing. As she gazed she recognized 
in the throng the young girl for whom she was praying. 
A voice said : "Pray, that she pass not over the arch and 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 109 

down the other side." Falling upon her knees, she cried 
out to Him who is Life, who giveth life and restoreth 
even the dead to the arms of loving parents. The vision 
passed. She arose, satisfied by the Spirit that the girl 
was safe. 

It was learned later that at that hour the girl arose 
from the bed, took a few steps towards her mother, and 
dropped at her feet apparently dead. The mother cried 
out, "O, if Mrs. — were only here we could bring her 
back !" Then there came to her mind the talks they had 
often had together, of the living, present Christ, who, as 
with Lazarus, is still the "resurrection and the life" to 
those who believe. She cried out to Him; she saw only 
Him and Life, and not the daughter and death. The 
breath returned to the girl ; she arose, and was saved. 

The cry of the mother for her friend had been heard 
by her amidst busy housework; space was annihilated; 
the "two were joined together in His Name;" conditions 
were fulfilled, and His promise was kept — "there was He, 
Life, in the midst of them." 

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the 
life : he that believeth in me, though he have died, yet 
shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me 
shall never die. Believest thou this? Jesus said unto 
her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, 
thou shouldest see the glory of God?" 

In this case there was communication without speech 
in the usual way. We call it telepathy. No mechanical 
devices of man's hands, but spirit with spirit meeting. 
What a great reservoir of spiritual power is all about us, 
waiting for man to grow in righteousness and use for 



no The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

the glory of God. What a transfigured church we might 
have, if we would but believe and utilize the promises — 
transfigured from the church militant to the church tri- 
umphant, even the triumph over the last enemy, death. 
We are drinking so sparingly of the inexhaustible Foun- 
tain. What might not the church be if it fully availed 
itself of all the forces and powers at its disposal. 

S. Paul knew that body, soul and spirit were necessary 
for man's integrity and usefulness, and he caught a vis- 
ion of the law whereby the mortal body might be trans- 
figured by the renewing of the mind. Believing with 
all his being in the second coming of Jesus Christ, he 
passed this law on to the Thessalonians when he said: 
"I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be pre- 
served blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

He longed for the resurrection that should not come 
through bodily death and decay. Has any one the 
hardihood to mock S. Paul and call him a foolish and 
deluded dreamer? This was undoubtedly one of the 
things he received when he was "caught up into para- 
dise, and heard unspeakable words." He handed it 
on, that others might take it up, and adding the force 
of their faith might bring it to pass. How many Chris- 
tians are adding the force of their faith to S. Paul's mes- 
sage and longing? 

An English rector in a sermon says: "Enoch and 
Elijah were permitted to tread that path on which body 
and soul were permitted to go together. Now the In- 
finite has no favorites, and the scientific world rightly 
insists that the Impossible never happens, and that given 
identically the same condition you get the same results. 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. in 

"Christ taught, 'If a man keep my sayings, i. e., lives 
a perfect life, he shall never see death ;' but scholars tell 
us this is not to be taken literally as referring to physical 
death, and the objection that is raised is: 

"Look at S. Paul and all the saints — they all died. 
Well ! Christ's hearers were in exactly the same diffi- 
culty ; they, too, found it a hard saying, and they said to 
Him, 'Abraham is dead, the prophets are dead, whom 
makest Thou Thyself?' Now you remember that the 
word leaven in the New Testament meant either bread 
or teaching. Christ gave His teaching on the Bread of 
Life, and then said : 

' 'Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, 
and they died,' *. e., a physical death. A few verses on 
He says, 'This is the bread which came down out of 
heaven. Not as the fathers did eat and died; he that 
eateth this bread, i. e., assimilates My teaching, shall live 
forever.' 

"And Christ Himself was the embodiment of that 
teaching, and His own experience was a glorious vindi- 
cation of its truth; for when all the forces of evil were 
levelled against Him, and death the enemy actually held 
Him in its clutches, still even then His teaching did not 
break down, and 'His body knew no corruption, because 
in Him was no sin;' and the human race was shown 
clearly and this ideal was put before us (for it was our 
nature that He had taken upon Him) that if a man lives 
a perfect life, body and soul will pass together into the 
other world, for He is our perfect example, and that was 
what He did. 



H2 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

"There is a school of thought arising at the present 
time whose object is to cast aside the traditional view of 
death in favor of the view taught in the New Testa- 
ment, and emphasized by Christ's own victory over our 
enemies, sin and death." 

Rev. Percy Dearmer relates the following case of " 'la 
demoiselle Coirin,' whose cure was one of the famous 
miracles of Blessed Frangois de Paris. In 1716, this 
lady, then aged 31, fell from her horse; paralysis and an 
ulcer followed; by 1719 the ulcer was in a horrible con- 
dition; in 1720 her mother refused an operation, pre- 
ferring to let her die in peace. In 1731 — after fifteen 
years of an open breast — she asked a woman to say a 
novena at the tomb of Francois de Paris, to touch the 
tomb with her shift, and to bring back some earth. 
This was done on August 10th; on the nth she put on 
the shift and at once felt improved; on the 12th she 
touched the wound with the earth, and it at once began 
to heal. By the end of August the skin was completely 
healed up, and on September 24th she went out of doors. 
Charcot considers that the 'cancer' was due to hysteria, 
and has no difficulty in accepting all the facts of the dis- 
ease and its cure on this basis: the breast healed almost 
at once, and recovered its natural size — 'What wonder,' 
he says, 'since we know how rapidly troubles of the cir- 
culation can appear and disappear?' 

"Troubles of the circulation ! A breast built up again 
after fifteen years! But we are here in the very heart 
of the organic region! Where shall we draw this line, 
which is so often taken for granted, between functional 
and organic, between nervous and other diseases? 



The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 113 

Where, indeed, shall we say that the influence of mind is 
absent either in the cause or cure of disease? It is easy 
to belittle a miracle by saying that it merely cured a 
trouble of the circulation; but, merciful heaven! if we 
can by religious influence train the vaso-motor system, 
where is the tissue that we cannot touch ?" 

The above writer continues: "The Christian miracles 
(powers) are signs to every one of spiritual reality: 
they are significant of a power that can transcend ma- 
terial things. . . . They are signs of something be- 
yond the mere healing of the body — they illustrate the 
supremacy and the fundamental nature of the spirit; 
and this is what our generation needs to learn. . . . 
They remind us that health is an important thing, and 
that the spread of health is one of the prime duties of 
religion. . . . They tell us also that sickness is not 
the will of God ; because God is the author of health, and 
the spreading of His power is the quenching of sick- 
ness. . . . They are invaluable to the church, and 
rightly are they classed in Christian Liturgies among the 
'epiphanies' or manifestations. They show at once both 
the power and the loving kindness of the Master; but 
they also precisely show this — that a like power and a 
like loving kindness is expected from His disciples to- 
day, as it was expected during His own earthly min- 
istry." 

"A good report maketh the bones fat." — Prov. 15: 30. 

"Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the 
arm of the Lord revealed?" — Is. 53: 1. 

"But though he had done so many miracles before 
them, yet they believed not on him; that the saying of 
8 



ii4 The Revival of the Gifts of Healing. 

Esaias might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who 
hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of 
the Lord been revealed?" 

"How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the 
gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things ! 
But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias 
saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?" 



NOV 1% 1S10 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



